Page images
PDF
EPUB

ON A YOUNG GENTLEMAN'S DEATH...INSCRIPTION.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Approach not, stranger, with unhallow'd feet,
Nor mock the spot, unshelter'd now, and bare!
The grove's old honours rose majestic there:
It's giant arms extending to defend
Thy reverend temples, man's and virtue's friend!
Secure thy walk that unpierc'd gloom along,
No storm approach'd to silence Homer's song;
No beam to wound thy Heav'n-directed eye:
The world's near tumult swept unheeded by.
Now, low as thine, these towering heads are laid,
No more embower the mansion in their shade,
Time-honour'd pile! that owning thee its lord,
Saw ancient manuers, ancient faith, restor❜d;
In renovated youth beheld again
Saturnian days, the good Eliza's reign.
With thee too sheltering many an angel guest,
For what, but Heaven, serener than thy breast?-

307

Blest mansion then, simplicity's abode,
Where smiling innocence look'd up to God,
Where nature's genuine graces charm'd the heart,
Or nature, polish'd but by classic art. [beams,
The saint's high rapture, and the poet's dreams,
There fancy, warm'd with brightest, chastest
While virtue left, delighting there to dwell,
The pensive mountain, and the hermit's cell.-
There the good teacher held by turns to youth
The blaze of fiction and pure light of truth,
Who, less by precept than example fir'd,
Glow'd as he taught, inspiring and inspir'd.

Nor think, gay revellers, this awful roof
Echoed no sounds but wisdom's harsh reproof;
The social board, attendant mirth, was there,
The smile unconscious of to morrow's care,
With every tranquil joy of wedded life,
The gracious children, and the faithful wife.
In dance, in song, in harmless sports approv'd,
There youth has frolick'd, there soft maids have

lov'd.

There one, distinguish'd one-not sweeter blows
In simpler ornament attir'd, the rose,
The rose she cull'd to deck the nuptial bower,
Herself as fair-a transitory flower.-

Thus a short hour-and woods and turrets fall;

The good, the great, the beauteous, perish all.
Another age a gayer race supplies,

Less awful groves, and gaudier villas rise,
See wisdom's place usurp'd by folly's sons,
And scorners sit on virtue's vacant thrones,
See neighbouring Combe's old genius quit its
[towers;
Not Warwick's name preserv'd his gothic
Nor distant see new royal domes deride

bowers,

What half remains of Wolsey's ancient pride!
While yet this humbler pile survives to prove
A mansion worthy of its master's love:
Like him, still welcomes to its liberal door
Whom most he honour'd, honouring most the
poor;

Like him, the lisping infant's blessing shares,
And age's gratitude in silent prayers.-
While such partake the couch, the frugal feast,
No regal chambers boast an equal guest;
For, gracious Maker, by thy own decree,
Receiving mercy is receiving Thee !-

' Combe-Neville, near Kingston, built by the king-making earl of Warwick.

The new apartments at Hampton Court, raised on the ruins of part of Wolsey's palace.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

THE

LIFE OF WALTER HARTE,

BY MR. CHALMERS.

THE following desultory information, perhaps improperly called a life, is derived principally from the notes on Mr. Nicholls's collection of poems, augmented by various notices in the Gentleman's Magazine, the author's works, and the writings of his contemporaries. His learning and personal worth, neither of which have ever been called in question, would have procured him a more particular narra tive, if it had been possible to recover the requisite materials.

His father the rev. Walter Harte was fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, prebendary of Wales, canon of Bristol, and vicar of St. Mary Magdalen, Taunton, Somersetshire. Refusing to take the oaths after that revolution which placed a new family on the throne, he relinquished all his preferments, in 1691, and retired to Kentbury in Buckinghamshire, where he died February 10, 1736, aged eighty-five. His son informs us, that when judge Jefferies came to Taunton assizes in the year 1685, to execute his commission upon the unfortunate persons concerned in Monmouth's rebellion, Mr. Harte, then minister of St. Mary Magdalen's, waited on him in private, and remonstrated much against his severities. The judge listened to him calmly, and with some attention, and, though he had never seen him before, advanced him in a few months to a prebendal stall in the cathedral church of Bristol. "I thought," says Dr. Warton, who has introduced this story in his notes on Pope," the reader might not dislike to hear this anecdote of Jefferies, the only one action of his life that I believe does him any credit." Old Mr. Harte was so much respected for his piety and learning, that the prelates Kidder, Hooper, and Wynne, who successively filled the see of Bath and Wells, contrived that he should receive the profits of his prebend of Wells as long as he lived and Mr. Simon Harco urt, afterwa the celebrated lord chancellor,

« EelmineJätka »