A month rolled on to the grave of time;
The second month was in its prime,
But its days and weeks flew quickly past;
And the third month now was waning fast,
When Mr. H-began to write,

And (worse than that) began to read;
While the hapless debtors from morn to night,
One and all cried shame on the ruthless deed.
But still he wrote, and still he preached,
Ratted and ranted, swore and speeched,
Till (vengeance light on his murderous head!)
He talked an innocent debtor dead.

The Arbiter Elegantiarum

Kicked Juan out of the devil's harem;
Because he corrupted Apollyon's crew,

And kissed (oh, the rogue) all the she-devils too :
E'en so, our debtors resolved to try,

By clapping the author in Coventry,

To drive him forth from His Majesty's Bench,
To the ruddy arms of his Hampstead wench.†
Long they tried, but they tried in vain;
Long they swore, but he swore again;
Preached and speeched to the sorrowful crew,
Table-talk wrote, and read them too ;-
Till all cried out with grief sincere,

"Oh! curse the day that an author came here."—

The third month now rolled swiftly on,

The debtors were glad, for the author was gone
To Winterslow hut he rode the next day,

And read the coachman to sleep by the way;
Till even he cried out with fear-

"Oh! curse the day that an author came here."

*

On Salisbury plain is a voice of wail;

Woman's eye is wet, and man's cheek is pale:
For an author is reading his works with a smile,
While the twain sit weeping and sleeping the while.
The woman who weeps is the author's wife;
And the man who sleeps is the "friend of his life"-
A little plump-visaged wit of Cockaigne,
Who snores o'er an essay on Salisbury plain,
And strives to escape the infliction in vain.-
Now, long live all scholars with money to lend,
And long live all readers with any to spend ;
And long live all those who have cash to receive,
And long live all those who have any to give;
Provided that, spite of bad grammar, they still
Will purchase the essays of Table-talk Will.

* Vide the whimsical extravaganza of Giovanni in London.

I am for a set of country beauties with red arms and mob-caps.-Oh! might I attempt a description of some of them in poetic prose, Don Juan should forget his Julia.-Vide Table-talk, Vol. ii.

MENTAL ACCOUNT-KEEPING.

The computations of a man's life are busie as the Tables of Sines and Tangents, and intricate as the accounts of Eastern Merchants; and therefore it were but reason we should summe up our accounts at the foot of every page.

JEREMY TAYLOR's Holy Dying.

ARE we any thing wiser or better to-day than we were yesterday?— The more frequently we put this important question to ourselves, the more satisfactorily will it be answered; but alas! how many there are to whom it seldom-very seldom if ever occurs! The greater part of mankind hurries heedlessly on through the maze of intellectual and moral life, without providing any clue by which a return may be effected, in case the path chosen may be a wrong one. Some men, indeed, will, before they are inextricably bewildered, see their error, and give a wishful glance back towards the point of their first deviation; but even of these there are not many who will profit by the possibility still existent of retracing their steps. To most of them both tracts appear interminable; for an eye of little foresight soon magnifies an extended space into infinity, and in this there are no degrees, therefore to go on or not seems indifferent. But were we to remark at stated intervals our progress through the world, and to compare each advance with the preceding one, it would seldom oecur, with such motives to self-emulation, that our speed in improvement were slackened, or that we had for any length of time been pursuing a mistaken course. It is vain to leave it until " sixty years," before we "call our old debts in," and, as Byron goes on to express it with his usual levity, cast up our accounts of good and evil." Reckonings of such moment as this is to our welfare, ought to be made with far greater frequency. What hinders it, that we every passing day sum up, as a merchant does his daily receipts and payments, every circumstance in the four-and-twenty hours that have expired, which denotes any increase or diminution of our mental worth? A tradesman would be laughed at as a fool, or condemned as a knave, if even of his most trivial dealings he kept so loose an account as men do with regard to the affairs of their heart and understanding. The consequence of such neglect is in both cases very much the same; equally ruinous, and alike irremediable. How many little actions there are, indicative of a tendency to certain species of vice we are yet free from, which actions, if shrewdly detected, and carefully noted down in the memory, would serve to warn us against the commission of others resembling them, but still exceeding them in faultiness by those gentle gradations which make the lapse into crime so all but imperceptible. "Facilis descensus Averni," says the sybil ;

The gates of hell are open night and day,
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way."

Let us proceed to the lines in continuation :—

66

But, to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies.

in us.

Let us hearken to this fearful admonition, and then say if it behove us not to feel our ground at every step, lest the treacherous declivity of sin inveigle us into a gulf at once bottomless and irregressible. How many germs of virtue, too, may develope themselves in our daily conduct, and fall into abortion merely for want of being observed, and so being duly fostered and reared to maturity! We do not give our virtues their due honour, unless we keep some record of the good they have wrought By forgetting our ill deeds we gain nothing in peace of mind, for that thoughtlessness will surely be followed by fresh iniquities, fresh causes (and mostly heavier ones) of repentant anguish; but in omitting to seat firmly within our souls the remembrance of such redeeming traits of character as have been elicited from us, we deprive ourselves of models for our present and future imitation; and moreover we wantonly reject the sweetest recompense that waits on virtuous deeds, the most availing solace of our darker hours, and the most eloquent plea that can give weight to our prayers for divine mercy. The regular adjustment of our spiritual matters which is here recommended, will soon cease to be irksome, whoever they be that practise it. The idle may be assured that a constant habit of self-communion will speedily rouse them to greater enjoyments than those of listlessness and inertion, and will effectually dissipate the ennui, which one may swear they are oppressed with; the sordid may rely on finding advantage, even as to things apparently independent of the mind, in the plan proposed; and the wicked themselves may depend on it that a frequent review of their career will ultimately much augment their gratifications, and make the very world they so dote on, beyond measure more delightful to them than at present-to say nothing of its leading them to another and a better one.

To the good, this advice and the scheme it includes, will need no other recommendation, than that what is urged has well-living for its object; but if it be possible for any one to have attained to the least proficiency in that art of arts, without the aid of periodical self-examinations, he may as well be informed, that in addition to the arguments by which these have above been upheld, there has been much able writing in all civilized times and countries, for the purpose of promoting the same salutary custom; and to ensure a serious consideration of the subject by all who reverence true learning and piety, one need only observe that it has occupied the ethical hours of a Watts, a Johnson, a Paley and a Locke.

SUMMER EVENINGS.

No. III.

CONCLUDING PART OF SIR GREY COOPER'S ODE.
(Inserted in our last No. p. 59.)

ONCE more, great Priest of Truth divine!
I come, with reverential awe,

To view, unfolded at thy shrine,

The mysteries of Nature's law:

The mind's recesses to explore,
The secrets of the heart to scan,
And, led by metaphysic lore,

Survey the inward state of man.
To learn how, when the body sleeps,
And motionless each fibre seems;
FANCY within her revels keeps,

And the dark chamber paints with dreams:
When JUDGMENT nods upon his throne,
And CONSCIENCE even retires to rest;
When every sense has lost its tone,

And all discerning powers supprest:
Save, that by fits, the watchful NERVES
Start at the visions as they pass;
And MEMORY some faint forms preserves,
Group'd in disorder on her glass.

Thus, when from heaven the sun declines,
And twilight lingeringly expires,
The glow-worm in the valley shines,
And shows its ineffectual fires.
Close in her prison-house immured,
Does the SOUL in sleep repose;
And, her etherial light obscured,
The energy of thinking lose?

Yet pause

-and checking her career,
Let SCIENCE stop where REASON ends;
To all beyond that nice barrier,

The higher power of FAITH extends.
Enough to know, that through this life,
The SPIRIT, doom'd her load to bear,
Must, after all their mutual strife,

The fate of her associate share.
If with fair Temperance she dwell,
Where virtue purifies the blood;
Where no bold passions dare rebel,

Nor guilt invade the calm abode ;
Then, the bright essence of the mind
Through every limb divinely wrought,
And all the outward form refined,

The body seems inspired with thought :
But, to the gross material frame

Should Vice her influence impart :
Should sensual lusts extinguish shame,
And habit blunt the conscious heart;

Th' immortal part infected grows,
The soul imbodies and imbrutes,†

Till the degraded being lose

All her celestial attributes.

Yet, when life's probation 's o'er,
And Nature has her trial stood;

When minds and bodies change no more,
The pure in heart shall see their God.
And yon proud, impious band, combin'd
From heaven the thunderbolt to wrest,
May, when their crimes are finish'd, find
That death is not eternal rest. ‡

+ Milton's Comus.

The Jacobins proposed a decree, that death is only eternal sleep.

A TALE OF PARAGUAY.

DOCTOR, or as some irreverent folks persist in calling him-Mr. Southey, has evidently passed the Rubicon: the first step in the ladder of his fame was the democratic "Wat Tyler,"-the last, the aristocratic "Vision of Judgment." "Thalaba," "The Curse of Kehama," and "Joan of Arc," may be regarded as the manhood of his glory: its youth and age, though remote as the antipodes from each other, agree nevertheless in one feature that they are both bad : his ends, as somebody said of a cucumber, are equally indifferent. We do not mean to dispute, but what the seeds of that genius, which afterwards blossomed so fairly in the autumn of his fame, were not discernible in his earlier works,- -nor that the hot-headed enthusiasm-the misguided intemperance they displayed, did not augur better things, when the wild luxuriance of youthful feeling had sobered beneath the tempering beams of rising maturity; yet, we still think, that "The Curse of Kehama" is as much more worthy the name of Southey as the " Vision of Judgment" is beneath it. He has excited hopes which he has fulfilled to an eminent degree, and doubts and fears which he has more than realized.

The Doctor, we believe, to this day, to be considered as nothing more than a clever well-informed man, with a considerable portion of self-acquired talent: genius has been put altogether out of the question. But let us examine the facts, which any bookseller's shelves will demonstrate. The Doctor has, without exception, written more than any author of eminence existing, the leviathan of the north not excepted,and in styles as opposite, and on subjects as distinct, from his "Joan of Arc," breathing with the divinest spirit of liberty, to his last article in The Quarterly Review. We are far from expressing anything like a concordance with, or a dissent from, the learned Doctor's political tenets : that subject is, to us at least, neutral ground ; would, that it were so to all others. He may be, for aught we know, on the right side of the hedge, for a hedge every controversy is, that divides the social spirit of man from his fellow; and never more thorny, than when it springs in the sweet gardens of literature. He has shook off the wild garb of the mountain bard, for the bedizened robes of the courtierthe spirit of "Roderick" is lost in the "Loyal Address on the late happy Anniversary." Genius must be as free and as unshackled as the breeze of the morning; she pines and withers under the weight of a bag-wig, and "falls, never to rise again," when the knee is bent to catch the "courtly smile." But, is the biographer of Nelson, the minstrel of Keswick, the historian, the poet, the scholar, the divine, to be forgotten in the contributor of a ministerial review, or remembered only with pain in the hexameters of the Vision of Judgment? "Forbid it, ye Muses!" and Doctor Southey ; and

Give not to party, what was meant for mankind.

The poem which now claims our attention, is dedicated to "Edith May Southey," the daughter of the author, to whom he addresses the following delightful lines, which not only breathe the tenderest spirit of

By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq. LL.D. Poet Laureate, &c. 1825. Longman and Co.