POETS.

MATTHEW GREEN. MATTHEW GREEN (1696–1737) was author of a poem, 'The Spleen,' which received the praises of Pope and Gray. His parents were dissenters, but the poet, it is said, afterwards left their communion, disgusted with their austerity. He obtained an appointment as clerk in the Custom-house. His disposition was cheerful; but this did not save him from occasional attacks of low spirits, or spleen, as the favourite plırase was in his time. Having tried all imaginable remedies for his malady, he conceived himself at length able to treat it in a philosophical spirit, and therefore wrote his poem, which adverts to all its forms, and their appropriate remedies, in a style of comic verse resembling 'Hudibras,' but allowed to be eminently original. Green terminated a quiet inoffensive life of celibacy in 1737, at the age of forty-one.

• The Spleen' was first published by Glover, the author of 'Leonidas,' himself a poet of some pretension in his day. Gray thought that even the wood-notes of Green often break out into strains of rcal poetry and music.' As · The Spleen' is almost unknown to modern readers, we present a few of its best passages. The first that follows contains one line marked by italic, which is certainly one of the Imppiest and wisest things ever said by a British author. It seems, however, to be imitated from Shakspeare

Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires.

Cures for Melancholy.
To care the mind's wrong bias, spleen, I dress my face with studions looks,
Some recommend the bowling-green ; And shorten tedious hours with books.
Some hilly walks; all exercise ;

But if dull fogs invade the head, Fling but a stone, the giant dies ;

That memory minds not what is read, Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been I sit in window dry as ark, Extreme good doctors for the spleen ; And on the drowning world ren ark : Aud kitten, if the humour hit,

Or to some coffee-house I stray Has harlequined away the fit.

For news, the manna of a day, Since mirth is good in this behalf, And from the hipped discourses gather, At some particulars let us laugh.

That politics go by the weather. If spleen-fogs rise at break of day, Sometimes I dress, with women sit, I clear my evening with a play,

And chat away the gloomy fit; Or to some concert take my way.

Quit the stiff garb of serious sense, The company, the shine of lights,

And wear a gay impertinence, The scenes of humour, music's flights, Nor think nor speak with any pains, Adjust and set the soul to rights.

But lay on Fency's neck the reins. In rainy days keep double guard,

I never game, and rarely bet, Or spleen will surely be too hard ;

Am loath to lend or run in debt. Which, like those fish by sailors met, No Compter-writs me agitate ; Fly highest while their wings are wet. Who moralising pass the gate, In such dull weather, so unfit

And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn, To enterprise a work of wit ;

Who vainly o'er their bondage mourn. When clouds one yard of azure sky, Wisdom, before beneath their care, That's fit for simile, deny,

Pays her upbraiding vi its there,

And forces Folly through the grate And zeal, when baffled, turns to spleen. Her panegyric to repeat.

Happy the man, who, innocent, This view, profusely when inclined, Grieves .ot at ills he can't prevent; Enters a caveat in the mind :

His skiff does with the current glide, Experience, joined with common sense, Not putting pulled against the tide. To inortals is a providence.

He, paddling by the scuffling crowd, Reforming schemes are none of mine ; Sees unconcerned life's wager rowed, To mend the world 's a vast design : And when he can't prevent foul play, Like theirs, who tug in little boat

Enjoys the folly of the fray.
To pull to them th: ship afloat,

Yet philosophic love of ease
While to defeat their laboured end, I suffer noi to prove disease,
At once both wind and stream contend : But rise up in the virtuous cause
Success herein is seldom seen,

Of a free press and equal laws.

Contentment- A Wish. Forced hy soft violence of prayer, And dreams, beneath the spreading beech, The blithesome goddess soothes my care; Inspire, and docile fancy teach ; I feel the deity inspire,

While soft as breezy breath of wind, And thus she models my desire :

Impulses rustle through the mind :
Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid, Here Dryads, scorning Phæbus' ray,
Annuity securely made,

While Pan melodious pipes away,
A farın some twenty miles from town, In measured motions frisk about,
Small, tight, salubrious, and my own; Till old Silenus puts them out.
Two maids that never saw the town, There see the clover, pea, and bean,
A serving-man not quite a clown,

Vie in variety of green;
A boy to help to tread the mow,

Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep, And drive, while t'other holds the plough; Brown fields their fallow Sabbaths keep, A chief, of temper formed to please, Plump Ceres golden tresses wear, Fit to converse and keep the keys; And poppy top-knots deck her hair, And better to preserve the peace,

And silver streams through meadows Commissioned by the name of niece;

stray, With understandings of a size,

And Naiads on the margin play, To think their master very wise.

And lesser nymphs on side of hills, May Heaven-it's all I wish for-send From plaything urns pour down the rills. One genial room to treat a friend,

Thus sheltered free from care and strife, Where decent cupboard, little plate, May I enjoy a calm through life ; Display benevolence, not state.

See faction safe in low degree, And may my humble dwelling stand As men at land see storms at sea, Upon some chosen.spot of land :

And laugh at miserable elves, A pond before full to the brim,

Not kind, so much as to themselves, Where cows may cool, and geese may Cursed with such souls of base alloy, swim ;

As can possess, but not enjoy ; Behind, a green, like velvet neat,

Debarred the pleasure to impart Soft to the eye, and to the feet;

By avarice, sphincter of the heart; Where odorous plants in evening fair Who wealth, hard-earned by guilty cares, Breathe all around ambrosial air ;

Bequeath untouched to thankless heirs; From Eurus, foe to kitchen ground, May I, with look ungloomed by guile, Fenced by a slope with bushes crowned, And wearing virtue's livery-smile, Fit dwelling for the feathered throng,

Prone the distressed to relieve, Who pay their quit-rents with a song;

And little trespa ses forgive ; With opening views of hill and dale, With income not in Fortune's power, Which sense and fancy do regale,

And skill to make a busy hour; Where the half cirque, which vision With trips to town, life to amuse, bounds

To purchase hooks, and hear the news, Like amphitheatre surrounds :

To see old friends, brush off the clown, And woods impervious to the breeze, And quicken taste at coming down, Thick phalanx of embodied trees;

Unhurt by sickness' blasting rage, From hills through plains in dusk array, Aud slowly mellowing in age. Extended far, repel the day;

When fate extends its gathering gripe, Here stillness, height, and solemn shade, Fall off like fruit grown fully ripe, Invite, and contemplation aid :

Quit a worn being without pain, Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate Perhaps to blossom soon again. The dark decrees and will of fate

ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE. A series of six imitations of living authors was published in 1736 by Isaac HAWKINS BROWNE (1706–1760), which obtained great popularity, and are still unsurpassed. The nearest approach to them are the serious parodies in the ‘Rejected Addresses. Browne was an amiable, accomplished man. He sat in parliament for some time as member for Wenlock in Shropshire. He wrote a Latin poem, · De Animi Immortalitate,' in the style of Lucretius, and an English poem on the subject of Design and Beauty.' His imitations, however, are his happiest work. The subject of the whole is ‘A Pipe of Tubacco, and the first of the series is 'A New Year's Ode,' an imitation of Cola ley Cibber, beginning thus:

Recitativo.
Old battle-array, big with horror, is fled,
And olive-robed Peace again lifts up her hea..
Sing, ye Muses, tobacco, the blessing of peace;
Was ever a nation so blessed as this ?

Air.
When summer suns grow red with heat,

Tobacco tempers Phæbus’ ire;
When wintry storms around us beat,

Tobacco cheers with gentle fire.
Yellow autumn, youthful spring,
In thy praises jointly sing.

Recitativo.
Like Neptune, Cæsar guards Virginian fleets,
Fraught with tobacco's balmy sweets ;
Old Ocean trembles at Britannia's power,

And Boreas is afraid to roar.
Cibber's laureate effusions are here very happily travestied. Ambrose
Philips's namby-pamby is also well hit off:
Little tube of mighty power,

With my finger gently braced, Charmer of an idle hour,

And thy pretty swelling crest, Object of my warm desire,

With my little stopper pressed, Lip of wax and eye of fire;

And the sweetest biiss of blisses Aud thy snowy taper waist

Breathing from thy balmy kisses. Thomson is the subject of the third imitation :

O thon, matured by glad Hesperian suns,
Tobacco, fountain pure of limped truth,
That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought,
Swarms all the mind; absorpt is yellow care,
And at each puff imagination burns;
Flash on thy bard, and with exalting fires
Touch the mysterious lip that chants thy praise,
In strains to mortal song of earth unknown.
Behold an engine, wrought from tawny mines
Of ductile clay, with plastic virtue formed,
And glazed magnific o'er, I grasp, I fill.
From Pætotheke with pungent powers perfumed
Itself one tortoise, all, where shines imbibed

Each parent ray; then rudely rammed illume,
With the red touch of zeal-enkivdling sheet,
Marked with Gibsonian lore; forth issue clouds,
Thought-thrilling, thirst-.nciting clouds around,
Aud many-mining fires : 1 all the wbile,
Lolling at ease, inhale the breezy balm.
But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join
In genial strife and orthodoxal ale,
Stream life and joy into the Muse's bowl.
Oh, be thou still my great inspirer, thou
My Muse: oh, fan me with thy zephyrs boon,
While I, iu clouded tabernacle surined,

Burst forth all oracle and mystic song. This appears to be one of the happiest of the imitations; but as the effect of Thomson's uurgid style and diction employed on such a theme is highly ludicrous, the good-natured poet was offended with: Browne, and indited some angry lines in reply. The fourth imitation is in the style of Young's Satires,' which are less strongly marked by any mannerism than bis · Night Thouguts,' not thien written. Pope is thus imitated :

Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense
To templars, modesty, to parsons, sense;
So raptured priests, at famed Dodona's shrine,
Drank inspiration from the steam divine.
Poison that cures, a vapour that affords
Content mor solid than the smile of lords:
Rest to the weery, to the hungry food,
The last kind refuge of the wise and good.
Inspired by thee, dull cits adjust the scale
Of Europe's peace, when other statesmen fail.
By thee protected, and thy sister beer,
Poets rejoice, nor think the bailiff near.
Nor less the critic owns thy genial aid,
Wh.le supperless he plies the p ddling trade.
What though to love and soft delights a fou,
By ladies hated, hated by the beau,
Yet social freedom long to courts unknown,
Fair health, fair truth, and virtue are thy own.
Come to thy poet, come with healing wings,

And let me taste thee unexcised by kings. Swift concludes the series, but though Browne sht the manner of the dean, he also imitated his grossness.

SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS.

As a satirical poet, courtier, and diplomatist, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1709-1759) enjoyed great popularity during the latter part of the reign of George II. Lord Hervey, Lord Chesterfield, Pulteney, and others, threw off political squibs and light satires; but Williams eclipsed them all in liveliness and pungency. He was introduced into public life by Sir Robert Walpole, whom he warmly supported • He had come, on the death of his father, Mr. Hanbury, into parliament in 1733, having taken the name of Williams for a large estate in Monmouthshire, left to him by a godfather who was vo relation. After his celebrated political poetry in ridicule of Walpole's antagonists, having unluckily lampooned Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, with her second husband, Mr. Hussey, an Irish gentleman, and his countrymen, he retreated, with too little spirit, from the storm that threatened him into Wales, whence he was afterwards glad to accept missions to the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and Russia.'* One verse of this truculent satire may be quoted :

But careful Heaven reserved her Grace
For one of the Milesian race

On stronger parts depending:
Nature, indeed, denies them sense,
But gives then legs and impudence,

That beats all understanding. Pulteney, in 1742, succeeded in procuring the defeat and resignation of his rival Sir Robert Walpole, and was himself elevated to the peerage under the title of Earl of Bath. From this period he sank from popular favour into great contempt, and some of the bitterest of Williams's verses were levelled at him. In his poem of the Statesman,' le thus characterises the new peer:

When you touch on his lordship’s high birth,

Speak Latin as if you were tipsy ;
Say we are all but the sons of the earth;
Et

genus non fecimus ipsi.
Proclaim him as rich as a Jew,

Yet attempt not to reckon his bounties,
You may say he is married, 'tis true,

Yet speak not a word of the countess.
Leave a blank here and there in each page;

To enrol the fair deeds of his youth;
When you mention the acts of his age,

Leave a blank for his honour and truth.
Say he made a great monarch change hands;

He spake-and the minister fell;
Say Ke made a great statesman of Sands-

Oh, that he had taught him to spell.
In another attack on the same parties, we have this pointed verse:

How Sands, in sense and person queer,
Jumped from a patriot to a peer

No mortal yet knows why;
How Pulteney trucked the fairest fame
For a Right Honourable name

To cali his vixen by. Such pasquinades, it must be confessed, are as personal and virulent as any of the subsequent political poetry of the Rolliad or Anti-Jacobin Review. The following is a more carefulspecimen of Williams's character-painting. It is part of a sketch of General Churchill--a man not unlike Thackeray's Major Pendennis:

* Croker: Lord Hervey's Memoirs