poet is but ditty, in him is both ditty and music. He entertains us in; the best leisure of our life, that is between meals, the most unfit time for study or bodily exercise. The flight of hawks and chace of wild beasts, either of them are delights noble: but some think this sport of men the worthier, despight all calumny, All men have been of his occupation; and, indeed, what he doth feignedly, that do others essentially. This day one plays a monarch, the next a private person. Here one acts a tyrant, on the morrow an exile; a parasite this man to-night, to-morrow a precisian, and so of divers others. I observe, of all men living, a worthy actor in one kind is the strongest motive of affection that can be: for when he dies, we cannot be persuaded any man can do his parts like him. But to conclude, I value a worthy actor, by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would do gold in the ore; I should not mind the dross, but the purity of the metal."

Coupling this admirable character of the "Franklin," with that of the Milkmaid," we may conclude that Sir Thomas Overbury had a keen taste for the pleasures of a rural life—but whether he had an opportunity of indulging it, we are unable to judge, from the scanty particulars which are left of his short

life.

A Franklin.

"His outside is an ancient yeoman of England, though his inside may give arms (with the best gentleman) and never see the herald. There is no truer servant in the house than himself. Though he be master, he says not to his servants, go to field, but let us go; and with his own eye, doth both fatten his flock, and set forward all manner of husbandry. He is taught by nature to be contented with a little; his own fold yields him both food and raiment, he is pleased with any nourishment God sends, whilst curious gluttony ransacks, as it were, Noah's ark for food, only to feed the riot of one meal. He is never known to go to law; understanding, to be law-bound among men, is like to be hide-bound among his beasts; they thrive not under it, and that such men sleep as unquietly, as if their pillows were stuft with lawyers' pen-knives. When he builds, no poor tenant's cottage hinders his prospect; they are, indeed, his alms-houses, though there be painted on them no such superscription. He never sits up late, but when he hunts the badger, the vowed foe of his lambs; nor uses he any cruelty, but when he hunts the hare; nor subtilty, but when he setteth scares for the snipe, or pitfals for the black-bird; nor oppression, but when in the month of July, he goes to the next river and sheers his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks not the bones of the dead any thing bruised, or the worse for it, though the country lasses dance in the church-yard after even song. Rock-monday, and the wake in summer, shrovings, the wakeful ketches on Christmas-eve, the hoky, or seed-cake, these he yearly keeps, yet holds them no relics of popery. He is not so inquisitive after news derived from the privy closet, when the finding an eiery of hawks in

his own ground, or the foaling of a colt come of a good strain, are tidings more pleasant and more profitable. He is lord paramount within himself, though he hold by never so mean a tenure, and dies the more contentedly, (though he leave his heir young) in regard, he leaves him not liable to a covetous guardian. Lastly, to end him; he cares not when his end comes; he needs not fear his audit, for his Quietus is in heaven."

At the end of this numerous gallery of portraits, the author gives you "a Character of a Character," which, says he,

"To square out a character by our English level, is a picture (real or personal) quaintly drawn in various colours, all of them heightned by one shadowing.

It is a quick and soft touch of many strings, all shutting up in one musical close; it is wits' descant on any plain song."

It is needless to tell the reader, after the many specimens we have given, that this is a very accurate definition of the author's own "Characters." They are, in truth, “a quick and soft touch of many strings," and do altogether discourse most excellent music. This description of writing is very old, as old as Theophrastus; and though many similar writers have given more true and verisimilar portraits of the characters they drew, we do not think one of this numerous race of authors has produced more amusing, ingenious, and, in some cases, more beautiful compositions of the kind, than some of those we have quoted. It unfortunately happens, that the vice of the times, the love of conceit, shews itself too conspicuously, and that the change of manners has rendered the language of too many parts totally unfit to meet a modern ear.

The book concludes with a few pages of lively matter, which the author terms "News from any Whence, or old Truth under a Supposal of Novelty." We give a specimen or two.

News from Court.

"It is thought here, that there are as great miseries beyond happiness, as on this side it, as being in love. That truth is every man's by assenting; that time makes every thing aged, and yet itself was never but a minute old. That, next sleep, the greatest devourer of time is business; the greatest stretcher of it, passion; the truest measure of it, contemplation. To be saved, always is the best plot; and virtue always clears her way as she goes. Vice is ever behind hand with itself. That wit and a woman are two frail things, and both the frailer by concurring."

From the Bed.

"That the bed is the best rendezvous of mankind, and the most necessary ornament of a chamber. That soldiers are good antiquaries

in keeping the old fashion, for the first bed was the bare ground. That a man's pillow is his best counsellor. That Adam lay in state when the heaven was his canopy. That the naked truth is, Adam and Eve lay without sheets."

ART. VI. The Athenaid, a Poem in Thirty Books.* By Richard Glover. 3 vols. 12mo. 1788.

It is proverbially the fate of those, who have been too highly or too exclusively extolled in their own day, to be unduly depreciated in the age which succeeds them; and this may serve to account for the churlish measure of praise, which is usually dealt to the poets of the school of Queen Anne by critics of the present day. We confess that we see no adequate motive for such jealous parsimony. Their reign is decidedly gone by; no danger is to be apprehended to the taste of the " reading public," from their writings; the revival of the critical system, under which they flourished, is as little to be dreaded as the restoration of the Stuarts; we can now afford to canvas their merits dispassion

* The following remarks are from the pen of a well-known critic in the Quarterly Review." The Athenaid, which could not be included in Anderson's collection, is contained in this, (Chalmers's Poets.) It ought always to accompany the Leonidas. Mr. Chalmers censures it, because, he says, the events of history are so closely followed as to give the whole the air of a poetical chronicle. To this opinion we may oppose the fact of having ourselves repeatedly perused it in early youth, for the interest which the story continually excited. Glover endeavoured to imitate the ancients, but wanted strength to support the severe style which he had chosen. He has, however, many and great merits; this especially among others, that instead of treading in the sheep-track wherein the writers of modern epics, till his time, servum pecus, had gone one after the other, he framed the stories of both his poems according to their subject, without reference to any model, or any rule but that of propriety and good sense." Quart. Rev. vol. xi. p. 498 --9. The critic triumphs unmercifully over Mr. Chalmers's assertion (if, indeed, it is not adopted by him from some former writer) that "Glover thought that iambic feet only should be used in heroic verse, without admitting any trochaic:" without, however, undertaking to defend this proposition, we may observe, that Glover appears to have had an objection to the frequent use of the trochee (if the term may be used) in heroic blank verse; as may be seen, by comparing any passage of either of his poems with one of equal length from Paradise Lost. The reviewer has not noticed the omission of Glover's two dramatic works, in a collection which contains Mickle's Siege of Marseilles.

ately, and to adjudge them their deserved honours. Even when principles of any kind have been firmly established in an individual mind, temporary reactions will sometimes take place; and, for our own parts, confirmed as we are in our attachment to what has been vaguely termed the "new school," the polished poets of a century back still retain a strong hold on the more earthly part of our imaginations. Their remembrance is connected with the associations of childhood; and there are times, when their mellow and equable beauties harmonize more with the tone of our minds, than the higher excellencies of their illustrious rivals. Their merits, though of an inferior order, were exclusively their own; "habeant secum, serventque sepulchro."

With this school, however, the author, with whom we have now to deal, had only some qualities in common. The life and character of Richard Glover are too well known for us to dwell upon them. His Leonidas acquired extraordinary popularity in its day, and appears, like the pseudo-Ossian, to have obtained a higher, or, at least, a more lasting reputation on the continent, than in its own country; where, however, it still retains its rank as an English classic. We cannot consent to call this a party poem; although the author may have had a party view in publishing it. It was "the plan that pleased his childish thought;" and its elaborate construction ill assorts with the notion of a

work written for a temporary purpose. We speak of it from recollection, having never perused it since those early days in which faults, of the kind which it contains, are less discernible, and beauties more striking; and, on this account, our judgement of it may perhaps be more favorable than it would otherwise have been. Of those, however, who have read it, many, we think, will agree with us in esteeming it a work of considerable merit. We do not mean to discuss the justice of Aristotle's code, or the propriety of adhering to the traditional rules of heroic poetry; but it must be allowed, that a genuine classical epic is a fine and stately thing. To deserve this title, there must be a large display of invention and art in the construction of the story, a grandeur of design, and a sustained dignity of manner; and human genius cannot occupy itself long and laboriously on one great and undivided design, without producing something worthy to endure. To this praise, Glover is fully entitled. The tameness of his manner, and his want of power, were, indeed, capital faults; but, in the general structure of the story, in the peopling of it with incidents and characters, and in the strain of feeling which he has diffused through the whole, he has displayed talents of no despicable order. He was, besides, in love with his subject, and with the manner which he had chosen. There is, indeed, observable in the poets of that age, which

serves as a connecting link between the school of Queen Anne and the singular generation of writers immediately preceding the French revolution, an attachment to Grecian models, and a propensity to Grecian principles. This was not to be wondered at in the country which had, in the century preceding, produced Milton. An enthusiasm for antiquity, and a patriotism and a love of freedom, pretty much of the antique stamp, pervade his works. Even in the opening lines of Comus, we can fancy we see the youthful poet" delighting to honour" his native country, by commemorating its localities in the very manner and forms of a Greek prologus, explaining the scene of the drama. And his example, forgotten for a while during the prevalence of adverse tastes and principles, might seem to have taken root in the heart of English literature, and produced its fruit in a following age. We need only refer to Akenside, who, with a fine talent for poetical declamation, and a fancy singularly barren, united a zeal, perhaps more than measured, for classical antiquity; Armstrong, whose poetical powers are underrated, and whose didactic poem is an elegant piece of art, constructed on the ancient model; the deeper inspiration of Collins; and the various merits of Gray, Mason, and the writer now before us. In treating a Grecian subject, he has adopted, and not without considerable success, the manner of a Grecian poet. And this species of imitation, while it is wanting in the requisite air of freshness, has a charm of its own, similar to that which we perceive in mo→ dern Latin or Greek poetry, when well executed, and which arises from the combination of classical recollections, with the domestic feeling which we experience in reading the works of our own language; a combination which, indeed, diminishes, in degree, both the species of pleasure alluded to, but which superadds to them the pleasure of contrast. The subject, also, was laid in his favourite times, and among his favourite heroes. His mind was full of those towering ideas of Grecian virtue which we imbibe in our boyhood, and which manhood, assisted by the clearer lights of the present age, discovers to be more or less exaggerated. In stating the existence of these splendid misconceptions, we pretend not to determine the question, whether their prevalence has been beneficial in its effects, or the contrary, however much we might be ourselves inclined to think that truth, wherever truth is attainable, will finally be found more useful, more sublime, more consolatory, more combining all the elements of excellence, than error. It may be a melancholy task, to " gather up the fragments which remain"-to construct anew our theories of Grecian patriotism and integrity. To rise above the weakness of giving up all, because much is lost to remember, that whatever may have been the crimes, or vices, or errors, of their advocates, liberty, and social order, and