A song of "The Jolly Full Bowl," urges with much glee,—

"And let the old miser hoard up his curs'd pelf,
He enriches his bags but he beggars himself;
The lover, th' ambitious, and miser are fools,
There's no solid joy but in jolly full bowls."

We fear there is a fallacy of composition or an equivocation in the last line. A full bowl is a mathematical solid, and it may be a joy. Is it therefore that it is called a "solid joy?"

The following verse is a striking comment on a Greek mythos,"Wine was the only Helicon Whence poets are long liv'd so, "Twas no other main

Than brisk champaigne

Whence Venus was deriv'd too."

Our temperance men will deny both the following propositions,— "All virtues wine is nurse to, Of ev'ry vice destroyer."

So many reasons have been given for quaffing that we may believe the writer of an old song, who thinks that where a sound one is wanting any other will be good enough for the jolly man's conscience,

"Good news-a friend-because I'm dry,
Or any other reason why."

A votary of Bacchus cries, in a song in praise of claret,—

"In spite of love, at length I find
A mistress that can please me;
But best of all, she has no tongue,
Submissive she obeys me:

She's fully better old than young,

And still to smiling sways me;
Her skin is smooth, complexion black,
And has a most delicious smack;

Then kiss, and never spare it,
'Tis a bottle of good claret."

The writers of several of the songs must have been in great straits for their rhymes, some of which seem grounded on the prosody of Butler.

"What maid would wish to be in her case,"

is a line that rhymes with "Dorcas."

"While Ned his little Dorcas answer'd,"

is answered by the rhyme of "man's word.”

The rhyme to "Hymen," is the verb to "tie men."

Another verse runs

"Now Nan had won the love of Joseph,
His heart, and eke his fancy;
He'd be content to lose his nose, if
He could but gain his Nancy;"

Elsewhere we read

"Fate order'd it should so be,"

to make it rhyme with "Toby."

We find here and there bright thoughts and flowing verse

..

But he is flint, and bears the art,

To kindle fierce desire,

Whose pow'r enflames another's heart,

And he ne'er feels the fire."

There are some good lines in a song by Booth"Sweet are the charms of her I love,

More fragant than the Damask rose;

Soft as the down of turtle dove;
Gentle as wind when Zephyr blows:
Refreshing as descending rains,
To sunburnt climes and thirsty plains."

Is the last line a theft from Tate and Brady? In the 139th Psalm we have

"One glance from thee, one piercing ray,

Would kindle darkness into day."

A lover puts the winning of a lady's heart under the metaphor of the siege of a fortress, and says

"I brought down

Great cannon oaths, and shot

A thousand thousand to the town,
And still it yielded not."

CONSTANCY.

"True as the needle to the pole,
Or as the dial to the sun;
Constant as gliding waters rowl,
Whose swelling hills obey the moon:
From ev'ry other charmer free,
My life and love shall follow thee."

TIME.

"Devouring Time, with stealing pace,
Makes lofty oaks and cedars bow."

A song on masquerading, sings

"For when we mask our faces,

We then unmask our hearts;

And hide our lesser beauties,

To show our better parts.'

A song by Mr. Arthur Bradley makes tears fall on a lady's bosom

"Like summer dew on lilies."

Vol. iii contains Cowley's 'Grasshopper,' from Anacreon's Ode to the "Tettix," set to music by J. Sheeles.

An Epithalamium on the marriage of a young gentleman with an old lady, praises his wisdom

"Then wisely you resign,

For sixty, charms so transient,
As the curious value coin
The more for being ancient."

HAPPINESS.

My days have been so wondrous free,
The little birds that fly,

With careless ease from tree to tree
Were but as blest as I.

Ask gliding waters if a tear

Of mine increas'd their flowing stream,

Or ask the flying gales if e'er

I lent one sigh to them!"

A STORM LULLED.

"But when the tempest's rage is o'er,
Soft breezes smooth the main ;

The billows cease to lash the shore,
And all is calm again."

The 'Genius,' written in 1717, on occasion of the Duke of Marlborough's apoplexy, gives him no niggardly praise. It says

and it calls him

"Poets, Prophets, Heroes, Kings,

Pleas'd thy ripe approach foresee;
Men who acted wondrous things,
Though they yield in fame to thee;"

"Half an angel, man no more."

Another song, written by Mr. Richard Estcourt, is called "The Tryal and Condemnation of John Duke of Marlborough."

"To tell you the deposition of the Christians, and not of the Jews, against John Duke of Marlborough."

It seems to have been written in his behalf when he was under the charge of having taken a bribe from a Jew for the supply of the army with bread, and in strains of irony heap upon him charges of having done great services for the land. It says, at Oudenard,

"He took a delight to beat even those

That never beat him in their lives."

"Twelve years, it sadly true is,

By taking of towns and lines,
And baffling the poor King Lewis,

He has spoil'd the Pretender's designs.
O meddlesome John Duke of Marlborough.
"Success still made him bolder,

And by the monsieur's fall,

He has pass'd on this isle for a soldier,

But, it seems, he knows nothing at all:

Earl P-t says so of Marlborough."

Among the many other songs of the collection we find Prior's 'Cupid Mistaken,' Gay's 'Black-eyed Susan,' with a tune by Leveridge, and 'The Charms of Nonsense,' by Richard Savage.

A song, called the "Cremona Fiddle," was written on the demolition of one at Longleat House, where it was put in a soft easy chair, and crushed by a fat man, who sat down on it unawares.

ART. V.-Family History.

Memoirs of the Ancient Earls of Warren and Surrey, and their Descendants to the present time. By the Rev. JOHN WATSON, M.A., F.A.S., late Fellow of Brazen-Nose College, in Oxford, and Rector of Stockport, in Cheshire. Warrington: Printed by William Eyres, M.DCC.LXXXII. 2 vols. 4to.

"The glories of our birth and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate,
Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crooked scythe and spade."

SO sang in the sixteenth century a member of a "worshipful family" of the chivalrous name of Shirley, which flourished in

Sussex in the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts, and whose substantial manorial residence stands in rural seclusion on the banks of the Ouse, near Lewes; and on whose portals is yet to be observed the moralising spirit of the race, in the admonitory family motto, Abstinete, Sustinete. But, alas! for the vanities which poetry affects to despise, and mankind in a cynical mood sometimes recoils from;-how universal is the appetite for "titles, honours, dignities!" Here are two portly quarto volumes, profusely illustrated, got up at great expense, to prove the right of a Knight of the Bath to the dignity of an ancient Earldom. The work, the title of which is given at the head of this article, was executed by order of Sir George Warren, at the end of the last century, to show his claim to the title of Earl of Warren and Surrey. But the author did not succeed in his endeavour.*

As this work is a genealogical dissertation, full of names and dates, and interspersed with extracts from records and copies of Latin charters, there are no passages which would be of sufficient interest in themselves to be worth extracting. It is not a readable narrative of family history, and therefore has no stories or incidents which could be detached and presented to the reader. We propose, therefore, to avail ourselves of the materials supplied by these volumes, to make a rapid sketch of the history of a fine old baronial family; and to offer some remarks, and suggestions in general, on the hitherto neglected subject of family history.

Among the many families of rank and wealth who flourished in this country during the first three centuries after the Norman conquest, the Earls of Warren and Surrey occupied a high position. The splendid actions of their lives were commensurate with the duration of their honours, for in the active times in which they lived supineness and imbecility would soon have caused their transfer to men of energy and capacity. Their greatness began by an alliance with royalty, was sustained by splendid matches, and, when the male line had become extinct by the death of the third earl, his daughter, by marrying successively two scions of a royal race, made more brilliant the reputation of titles which were now borne by princes of the blood; and it was not till the death of John, eighth and last earl, in the reign of Edward III, without lawful issue, that these eminent dignities ceased to be recorded in the illustrious roll of the nobles of England.

* The defect in his argument is explained at length in Cartwright's Hist. of Western Sussex (vol. ii, p. 128.)