A few outlines' must furnish our first extract, as having the interest which auto-biography always possesses, whether it be in prose or verse :—

'Out of obscurity I rise,

And men of knowledge do surprise;
But they can't see, nor neither know
The spring from whence my verses flow.
I am a man of humble name,

My father a shearman of the same;
My occupation lost, I tried

For other work then to provide,

For eight small children and a wife,
With whom I lived with scarce a strife;
Of late I've trod the path of rhyme,
And work'd it into verse and time.
See from my works what progress made!
Peruse! compare! extract from shade!
They'll bear the test, and will defy
The scoffer's and the critic's eye.
Though rage and madness may infame,
Yet still I bear the Laureat's name:
Little, nor White, can't be admir'd,—
John Alford is the man inspir'd.'

The other specimens have the higher claim of national interest, -being from a poem

ON STATE REFORM.

'Behold now with joy and wonder we see,
Reform in the House it surely must be;

No longer for boroughmongers to have a place

To send their bad members, or dare show their face.

Reform in the land has been all the cry;

And we loyal Britons, we cannot see why
We should not have power to send members too,
Especially now there's so much to do.

Earl Grey he proposed to have a reform,

To save old Britannia from a threatening storm.
We all shall be glad ;-we'll drink and we'll toast;
Our royal Britannia shall never be lost.

But let us not boast till the battle is won;

For we see and we know reform's not begun;
For certain great snakes still lies in the grass,
That use all their power for the Bill not to pass.

Those boroughmonger men in the House they have got,
They all are so crafty-a very bad lot;

But William the Fourth has brought it about;

Şince they are turn'd mad, he turn'd them all out.

King William the Fourth he rose up in haste,
And chas'd those bad members all out of their place.
there be wise men now choos'd for to stand

may To plead for the poor and the good of the land!' Two motives (besides the hope of gratifying our readers) have induced us to present these specimens to the public. The first is, that, not holding the seals of the home department, we could not, in compliance with the author's desire, lay the poems themselves before the King; and, considering the business of that department in these times, we think they will be more likely to meet his Majesty's eye, or reach his ear, through this channel, than if we had transmitted them to Lord Melbourne. Secondly,-seeing that this journal has, with all sincerity, in the discharge of what we believe to be our duty, opposed the ministerial plans of reform, we have felt ourselves bound in fairness not to withhold from Earl Grey and his administration the advantage of the Trowbridge laureate's declaration in their favour. John Alford's approbation should be worth something to those by whom the Vox Populi has been courted at such cost!

The Curiosities of Illiterature might furnish materials for an entertaining, and not uninstructive, volume.

Persons of such genius as these admirers of my Lords Grey and Segrave are manifestly independent of all culture; but in Mary Colling's case much might have been expected from a little of that education which is on thousands misbestowed,' or rather which thousands find utterly unprofitable. Her language is not like that of Mr. Crocker and Mr. Millhouse-the current language of poetry. Their compositions are, in this respect, as well as in all others, quite as presentable as those of the noble and honourable contributors to Mr. Heath's Keepsake;' whereas, in hers, provincialisms sometimes occur, and, more frequently, the expletive verb, which, having crept into our language imperceptibly (no one has yet traced how), disfigured it grievously under the three latter Stuarts, and now occurs only in the colloquial language of humble life. In England, that language has not escaped the imputation of ignorance and vulgarity, because nothing has been done to consecrate it: the attempt would be too late now, even if it were otherwise possible,-which it is not, for this reason, that the common speech differs in almost every county, and therefore cannot be generalized. It would have been a great advantage for Mary Colling if we had had a Doric dialect, like the Scotch.

Imitation will not make genius, (which, indeed, cannot be made,) but neither will it mar it. In poetry, as well as in painting and in architecture, the better the models which the student

VOL. XLVII. NO. XCIII.

H

has

has before him, the more he is likely to profit by his studies, if there be no deficiency either of power or judgment on his part. This uninstructed poetess hitherto has had very few, but she has evinced a remarkable aptitude for deriving from them all that could be obtained. In two of her pieces she has caught Cunningham's manner; and a picture of Envy, which she had seen in some little book when a child, lay in her mind for years, and at last gave birth to these spirited stanzas :

'Twas midnight-and the whirlwind's yell
Had started Horror from her cell;
The beasts, appall'd, mid nature moan'd,
The ocean raved, the forest groan'd.
The heavens put on their blackest frown;
Each star a direful ray shot down;
When Etna, with a thund'ring yell,
Foam'd out on earth the hag of hell.

As through the world she swiftly glided,
The winds her snaky locks divided;
Ten thousand hisses rent the air;
Her eagle talons wrought despair.

Fair flowers were blasted by her breath,
And she was arm'd with more than death;
For youth and age, and virtue's self,
Fell victims to the green-eyed elf.
In sulph'rous glooms she rode along,
Flames play'd around her forky tongue;
Her canker'd breast hove with despair-

Hell's blackest curse held empire there.'—pp. 44, 45.

One characteristic specimen more must conclude our extracts from this pleasing volume:

A LETTER TO MY SISTER ANNE.

Dear Anne, I'm to my promise true,
I now sit down to write to you:
But as for news, I've none to tell,
It may suffice to say I'm well;
But then, I think, it is not meet
To send an almost empty sheet.
To save my credit, I will try
To write of years that are gone by;
When you and I did often stray,
On many a sunny summer's day.
What feast did we with farthings
make!

How proud we were to give and take!
And in the meadows with what pride
We've gather'd flowers from Tavy's
side;
[brake,

When I did range through brier and
That I the prettiest bunch might
make!

And don't you recollect at night
Our neighbour John would, with de-
light,

Sit by the fire, when 'twas our glory
To hear him tell some goblin story;
Of rogues who lived at Roborough
rock;
[o'clock;

Of ghosts that walk'd at twelve
How oft was seen on such a lawn,
A coach with headless horses drawn ;
Of hounds on Heathfield seen to rise,
With horned heads and flaming eyes;

--

6

What wonders some old witch could
do?

Nor did we doubt but all was true.
And though these years are long gone
As firm as e'er's affection's tie; [by,
For as to that I've little fear,

Nor time nor change can it impair.
My service, with respects, record
To master and to mistress Ford;
And pray do mind my dear canary,
And then you'll please your sister
Mary.-

'This canary,' says Mrs. Bray, was a curiosity in natural history; as not only Mary Colling, but other persons who heard it, assure me it could talk. The talking canary is since dead; and I am much inclined to believe Mary killed it with kindness, by giving it pieces of cake and sweet things whenever it would call out to her, as it often did, "Give us a bit," or " Pretty bird," &c.'-pp. 73-75. Marivaux says, speaking of l'humeur grossiere qu'on contracte dans les viles occupations,' il semble que l'esprit se laisse abattre, par la misère et qu'il ne soit capable d'aucun sentiment elevé.' Some occupations undoubtedly there are which brutalize those who follow them, and render the heart as callous as the hands; but happily there are not, and cannot be many of these,not more than will always be filled by persons who have no repugnance for them, and seldom take to them till they have rendered themselves unfit for anything better. And few as these occupations are, they will be fewer when that improvement in society shall have been effected,-that radical-that only real reform,which must be made in this country, unless, as the plain conse.. quence and just punishment of our sins, both of commission and omission, England is to be utterly rebarbarised. During more than twenty years, it has been the constant doctrine of this journal, that the condition of our working classes must be physically and morally improved, if we would avert the horrors of a bellum servile, if we would prevent such convulsions as those by which France and the Low Countries were shaken in the days of the Artevalds and of the Jacquerie,—and Germany, during the peasants'

There would be no danger of such a catastrophe if our rulers had directed their attention to the moral economy of nations, instead of giving ear to the professors of that pseudo-science by which political economy has been mystified, to the ruin of thousands and tens of thousands. This kingdom can never again be safe till the great body of the community are contented in their stations. God alone knows how long it may be before any set of ministers will even dream of safety; but whoever, in his sphere, endeavours to improve the condition of those who are around him H 2

and

and below him, performs his part of that moral and religious statute labour which duty requires, and prepares the way for safety and for happier times.

One characteristic of the English populace,—perhaps we ought to say people, for it extends to the middle classes,—is their propensity to mischief. The people of most other countries may safely be admitted into parks, gardens, public buildings, and galleries of pictures and of statues; but in England it is necessary to exclude them, as much as possible, from all such places, not only because the proportion of rogues and ruffians is far greater here, to our shame be it spoken, than in any other Christian country, but because there is no security against the wanton mischief and gross offences which are committed in mere sport. This disgraceful part of the English character (for such it is, and as such all foreigners regard it) can neither be soon nor easily corrected; but anything tends to correct it that contributes to give the people a taste for intellectual pleasures,—anything that contributes to their innocent enjoyment,-anything that excites them to wholesome and pleasurable activity of body and of mind; and the faster the march of intellect can be made to proceed in this direction, and the farther it goes, the better.

It is necessary for the general weal that the goods of fortune should be unequally distributed,-that there should be high and low, rich and poor,-that there should be great riches, but not that there should be miserable poverty,-that there should be masters and servants, but not slaves; but it is not necessary that there should be that mental and moral inequality which at present exists beyond what is natural and inevitable. A little of that levelling influence which is allowed on the race-course and on the cricket-ground, might, with excellent effect, be introduced by better things. Modern refinement has widened the interval between masters and mistresses, and their domestics, much to the injury of the latter: farther refinement should tend to bring them again into the relation in which they formerly stood to each other.

Every one who has read Boswell's Life of Johnson' (and who that reads anything has not read that delightful miscellany?) must have admired the single stanza which Johnson preserved in his memory from a forgotten poem by a clergyman named Gifford, whose name, but for that beautiful stanza, would have been forgotten also:

Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound.
All at her work the village maiden sings;
Nor while she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitude of things.'

What singing is to the spinners and the knitters in the sun,'

or