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TO MY HONOURED KINSMAN,

JOHN DRYDEN,

OF CHESTERTON, IN THE COUNTY OF HUNTINGDON, ESQ.

[John Dryden, born in Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, 1631; died in London, 1st May, 1700. His first poem of any importance was written on the occasion of Cromwell's death, and appeared in 1658. He wrote a number of plays, The Wild Gallant being the first. His Essay on Dramatic Poesy contained the first acknowledgment, after the Restoration, of Shakspeare's supremacy. He was sometime laureate, but was dispossessed of that office at the Revolution, and Shadwell, whom he had bitterly satirized, was appointed in his stead. He wrote a great deal of prose and verse, original and translated. Of his works the most widely known in modern times are Absalom and Achitophel, a political and controversial poem, first published in 1681; The Hind and the Panther, a controversial poem in defence of the Romish Church, 1687; and Alexander's Feast, which is regarded as one of the grandest compositions in lyric poetry.]

How bless'd is he, who leads a country life,
Unvex'd with anxious cares, and void of strife!
Who studying peace, and shunning civil rage,
Enjoy'd his youth, and now enjoys his age;
All who deserve his love, he makes his own;
And, to be loved himself, needs only to be known.
Just, good, and wise, contending neighbours come
From your award, to wait their final doom;
And, foes before, return in friendship home.
Without their cost, you terminate the cause;
And save the expense of long litigious laws;
Where suits are traversed; and so little won
That he who conquers, is but last undone;
Such are not your decrees; but so design'd,
The sanction leaves a lasting peace behind;
Like your own soul, serene; a pattern of your mind.

Promoting concord, and composing strife,

Lord of yourself, uncumber'd with a wife;
Where, for a year, a month, perhaps a night,
Long penitence succeeds a short delight:
Minds are so hardly match'd, that even the first,
Though pair'd by Heaven, in paradise, were cursed.
For man and woman, though in one they grow,
Yet, first or last, return again to two.

He to God's image, she to his was made:

So, farther from the fount, the stream at random stray'd.

How could he stand, when put to double pain,
He must a weaker than himself sustain !
Each might have stood perhaps; but each alone;
Two wrestlers help to pull each other down.

Not that my verse would blemish all the fair;
But yet, if some be bad, 'tis wisdom to beware;
And better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.
Thus have you shunn'd, and shun the married state,
Trusting as little as you can to fate.

No porter guards the passage of your door;
To admit the wealthy, and exclude the poor;
For God, who gave the riches, gave the heart
To sanctify the whole, by giving part;
Heaven, who foresaw the will, the means has wrought,
And to the second son, a blessing brought;
The first-begotten had his father's share;
But you, like Jacob, are Rebecca's heir.

So may your stores, and fruitful fields increase;
And ever be you blessed, who live to bless.
As Ceres sow'd, where'er her chariot flew;
As Heaven in deserts rain'd the bread of dew,
So free to many, to relations most,
You feed with manna your own Israel-host.

With crowds attended of your ancient race,
You seek the champaign sports, or sylvan chase:
With well-breathed beagles you surround the wood;
Even then, industrious of the common good;
And often have you brought the wily fox
To suffer for the firstlings of the flocks;
Chased even amid the folds; and made to bleed,
Like felons, where they did the murd'rous deed.
This fiery game, your active youth maintain'd:
Not yet by years extinguish'd, though restrain'd;
You season still with sports your serious hours;
For age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.
The hare, in pastures or in plains is found,
Emblem of human life, who runs the round;
And, after all his wandering ways are done,
His circle fills, and ends where he begun,
Just as the setting meets the rising sun.

Thus princes ease their cares; but happier he,
Who seeks not pleasure through necessity,
Than such as once on slippery thrones were placed:
And chasing sigh to think themselves are chased.

So lived our sires, ere doctors learn'd to kill,
And multiplied with theirs, the weekly bill,
The first physicians by debauch were made;
Excess began, and sloth sustains the trade.
Pity the generous kind their cares bestow
To search forbidden truths; (a sin to know ;)
To which, if human science could attain,
The doom of death, pronounced by God, were vain.
In vain the Leech would interpose delay:

Fate fastens first, and vindicates the prey.

What help from art's endeavours can we have!
Gibbons but guesses, nor is sure to save:

But Maurus sweeps whole parishes, and peoples every grave;

And no more mercy to mankind will use

Than when he robb'd and murder'd Maro's muse. Wouldst thou be soon despatch'd, and perish whole! Trust Maurus with thy life, and M-lb-rn with thy soul.

By chase our long-lived fathers earn'd their food; Toil strung the nerves, and purified the blood; But we, their sons, a pamper'd race of men, Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten. Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.

The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
God never made his work, for man to mend.

The tree of knowledge, once in Eden placed,
Was easy found, but was forbid the taste;
O, had our grandsire walk'd without his wife,
He first had sought the better plant of life!
Now, both are lost: yet, wandering in the dark,
Physicians, for the tree, have found the bark:
They, labouring for relief of human kind,
With sharpen'd sight some remedies may find:
The apothecary train is wholly blind.
From files, a random-recipe they take,
And many deaths of one prescription make.
Garth, generous as his muse, prescribes and gives;
The shopman sells; and by destruction lives.
Ungrateful tribe! who, like the viper's brood,
From medicine issuing, suck their mother's blood,
Let these obey; and let the learn'd prescribe;
That men may die, without a double bribe:
Let them, but under their superiors, kill;
When doctors first have sign'd the bloody bill:
He 'scapes the best, who, nature to repair,

Draws physic from the fields, in draughts of vital air.

You hoard not health, for your own private use; But on the public spend the rich produce. When, often urged, unwilling to be great, Your country calls you from your loved retreat, And sends to senates, charged with common care, Which none more shuns; and none can better bear. Where could they find another form'd so fit, To poise, with solid sense, a spritely wit! Were these both wanting, (as they both abound) Where could so firm integrity be found?

Well-born, and wealthy; wanting no support,
You steer betwixt the country and the court;
Nor gratify whate'er the great desire,

Nor grudging give, what public needs require.
Part must be left, a fund when foes invade;
And part employ'd to roll the watery trade:
Even Canaan's happy land, when worn with toil,
Required a Sabbath-year to mend the meagre soil.

Good senators, (and such as you,) so give,
That kings may be supplied, the people thrive.
And he, when want requires, is truly wise,
Who slights not foreign aids, nor over-buys;
But, on our native strength, in time of need, relies.
Munster was bought, we boast not the success;
Who fights for gain, for greater makes his peace.
Our foes, compell'd by need, have peace embrac'd:
The peace both parties want, is like to last:
Which, if secure, securely we may trade;
Or, not secure, should never have been made.
Safe in ourselves, while on ourselves we stand,
The sea is ours, and that defends the land.
Be, then, the naval stores the nation's care,
New ships to build, and batter'd to repair.

Observe the war, in every annual course; What has been done, was done with British force.

Namur subdued, is England's palm alone;

The rest besieged; but we constrain'd the town:
We saw the event that follow'd our success;
France, though pretending arms, pursued the peace:
Obliged, by one sole treaty, to restore
What twenty years of war had won before.
Enough for Europe has our Albion fought:
Let us enjoy the peace our blood has bought.
When once the Persian king was put to flight,
The weary Macedons refused to fight:
Themselves their own mortality confess'd;
And left the son of Jove to quarrel for the rest.

Even victors are by victories undone;
Thus Hannibal, with foreign laurels won,
To Carthage was recall'd, too late to keep his own.
While sore of battle, while our wounds are green,
Why should we tempt the doubtful dye again?
In wars renew'd, uncertain of success,
Sure of a share, as umpires of the

peace.

A patriot, both the king and country serves;
Prerogative, and privilege preserves:

Of each, our laws the certain limit show,
One must not ebb, nor t'other overflow:
Betwixt the prince and parliament we stand;
The barriers of the state on either hand:
May neither overflow, for then they drown the land.
When both are full, they feed our bless'd abode;
Like those that water'd once the paradise of God.

Some overpoise of sway, by turns they share;
In peace the people, and the prince in war;
Consuls of moderate power in calms were made;
When the Gauls came, one sole dictator sway'd.

Patriots, in peace, assert the people's right;
With noble stubbornness resisting might:
No lawless mandates from the court receive,
Nor lend by force; but in a body give.
Such was your generous grandsire; free to grant
In parliaments, that weigh'd their prince's want:
But so tenacious of the common cause,
As not to lend the king against his laws.
And, in a loathsome dungeon doom'd to lie,
In bonds retained his birthright liberty,
And shamed oppression, till it set him free.

O true descendant of a patriot line,
Who, while thou shar'st their lustre, lend'st them thine,
Vouchsafe this picture of thy soul to see;

'Tis so far good as it resembles thee:
The beauties to the original I owe;
Which, when I miss, my own defects I show.
Nor think the kindred-muses thy disgrace;
A poet is not born in every race.
Two of a house, few ages can afford;
One to perform, another to record.
Praise-worthy actions are by thee embraced;
And 'tis my praise, to make thy praises last.
For even when death dissolves our human frame,
The soul returns to Heaven, from whence it came;
Earth keeps the body, verse preserves the fame,

No porter guards the passage of your To admit the wealthy, and exclude th For God, who gave the riches, gave the To sanctify the whole, by giving part Heaven, who foresaw the will, the me.

[graphic]

OF CHESTERTON, IN THE COUNTY OF HUNTINGDON, ESQ. And to the second son, a blessing bro

The first-begotten had his father's sha But you, like Jacob, are Rebecca's heir

So may your stores, and fruitful fi And ever be you blessed, who live to As Ceres sow'd, where'er her chariot As Heaven in deserts rain'd the bre So free to many, to relations most, You feed with manna your own Ian

With crowds attended of your an You seek the champaign sports, or With well-breathed beagles you su Even then, industrious of the com And often have you brought the w To suffer for the firstlings of the Chased even amid the folds; and Like felons, where they did the This fiery game, your active yout Not yet by years extinguish'd, th You season still with sports your For age but tastes of pleasures, The hare, in pastures or in plain Emblem of human life, who r And, after all his wandering w His circle fills, and ends where Just as the setting meets the ri

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF SORROW.

[D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, of Cumberland parentage and connections, born April, 1829, on the river Derwent in Tasmania; graduated at Cambridge, 1852, elected in the same year to a classical mastership

in the Edinburgh Academy, and nominated in 1864 to the professorship of Greek in the Galway College of the Queen's University, Ireland. He has successfully employed his pen in prose and verse, and his writings present us with profound thought in simple and attrac tive language. He is the author of Nursery Nonsense, or Rhymes without Reason; Fun and Earnest, or Rhymes with Reason; ancient Leaves, or Renderings of Greek and Latin Authors in English Verse: Day-dreams of a Schoolmaster—a delightful book, full of suggestive thought; Sales Attici, or the Wit and Wisdom of Athenian Drama; Wayside Thoughts, A Collection of Lectures; and Scala Nova, or a Ladder to Latin. He has also contributed to Macmillan's Magazine; and for the interesting series of miscellaneous sketches published by Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh, under the title of Odds and Ends, he wrote the Wayside Thoughts of an Asophophilosopher, from which we take the following essayette.]

For Heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories about everything,
And see which one amongst us shall weep first;
And from the tangled skein of circumstance
Let's weave a web of dreariest argument,
And make us comfortably miserable.

Listen! how the rain is pattering against the window-panes! and how the rain drives down the smoke!-and this is spring weather; the season belauded by our old poets, in phrases borrowed from southern singers and suited only to southern climes. I wish we had one of the old conventional fellows here; with permission to treat him as we thought fit. It would be a pleasure to stick him in the water-butt, and watch him from behind the window-blinds.

But, after all, this weather is better than what an east wind brings; the wind as cold and cutting as ill-natured wit; the wind that blows with such a penetrative cheerlessness, that, while your sunny-side is baking, your shady side is down at zero. You are, beneath its influence, a walking allegory of French toast: you have your nose equatorially at home, and your nadir in a Siberian exile. So it is: no blessings come unmixed: from the cup of enjoyment we never drink pleasure neat. The sweet, delicious wind that blows from the warm west, too often deluges us and our new hats with rain; and, if the sun shine brightly overhead, it is too often through the icy windmedium, that comes surcharged with rheumatism and bad temper from the uncomfortable

east.

But what does it matter to be kept indoors? Could we walk abroad, should we in an afternoon's ramble cast eyes upon a single happy face? Let us take a long retrospect of our own lives, and try to recall a week of uninterrupted happiness. If he is to be pitied that has no such green oasis to look back upon, how much more pitiable the wretch that looks back upon the pleasant spot and knows it may never be revisited!

Let the rain fall. 'Tis a good thing to be kept indoors. Let us be idle for a day, and hold aloof from the busy, restless world. Let us strip off our work-a-day clothes, and bare us to the skin, and wallow in luxurious laziness. Let the rain fall. We are thrown upon an unquiet age of competitive rivalry: we keep the bow eternally on the stretch: we are in a continuous state of training: we have ceased to perspire, from the lack of superfluous flesh and comfortable fat. We are eliminating all lymphatic temperaments from out the population: ere long there will not be a man among us to weigh fifteen stone. Plethora and apoplexy are waxing rare: not a bad thing of itself: but in their stead have come heart-disease and a spectral troop of shadowy nervous maladies. We begin life as our fathers ended it. We start our house-keeping with the luxuries that to them were the well-won rewards of half a century's unambitious toil, We are uncontentable hangangerels. We are uneasy dogs, for ever on the wrong side of the door.

But wherefore all this discontent, and hurry, and pressing forward? Were it not a pleasure to pause awhile; to stand at case; to lie upon our oars, and hear the rippling of the water; to spin, like a top, in a dizzy, quasi-motionless, sound sleep? were it not sweet to leave behind us the busy factory, the humming town, the many-languaged harbour; and to loll at ease upon one's solitary sofa; or, better still, on the green grass of beautiful Dalmeny; and to listen

with ear and soul to listen? And to what? Why, to the birds, or to anything. Heaven knows what music we should hear!

The school-boy longs for the holidays; the maiden for her bridal morn; the student for his fellowship; the father for the manhood of his boys. To reach a distant bourn, we are ever ready to leap the interval; forgetting that the interval may be a momentous fraction in our little life-total. It may be, indeed, that all intervals of life are not equally valuable. What infinitesimal price should we set upon a year of hobbydyhoyhood? What imagination could appraise an hour spent rapturously in speaking and listening to love-nonsense?

It is also possible that the speed as well as

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