deepest sympathy, and Mr. Jerry Deneen | this poor orphan. I remain with due a reprimand on his dilatoriness? respect Your humble servant WILLIAM

S

My noble spirit could not resist so charming a compliment, and I helped to obtain the license for another kind of "spirit,” thereby making glad the heart of the poor orphan.

Here is another letter in which my friend Dan says "he'd walk from here to Cork" for me, and a very long walk it would be.

SIR

Writen Thursday 18 hundred an 76. SIR my husband was very bad an died this tiome Sir I ave ben sodly put aboute by wan Jerry Deneen as behaved shamful to my poor husband Sir this was ow it hapned Tim thats my husband Sir was mioghty il an as near dyin as iver you Cee Tim says i an whoo wud ye lioke to mak yer cofin sure thin Mary says he theirs kno wan as i wud lioke to mak it bether thin Jerry Deneen only he is mioghty behinde hande in his conthracts arrah Tim Ye ought for to concider an alow that says I Sir mak yer minde aisey bout that for he is shure an sartin to finis the loikes my Pashion of Jalousy could not afford me but to spake prisumptious I used all o that in dacent tiome now Sir my pooremanes I could to pay my rint by givin husband the lord ave Marcy on his sowl had to waite for an other nites wake for that Jerry Deneen bad cess to him niver finised the dacent mans cofin in tiome now Sir I lave the mater in yer honers handes hopin as you will punis that vilan as want to charg me fiften shillin an he to kep my poor husband watin 2 bleshet nites for his cofin.

Yours to comande MARY C—. honored an kinde Sir may I thrust u to punis that divil Deneen.

A somewhat similar, and I might add amusing, instance happened not long ago when a tenant's wife died. It was on a Saturday night, I remember, and I did not hear of her death until Sunday. I then sent to my carpenter, and desired him to Next make a coffin for the remains. morning, on looking out of the window I saw her sons carrying the coffin from the workshop. I opened the window, and called to them to wait till I satisfied myself that it was a good one. On desiring them to lift off the cover, what was my astonishment to see the coffin filled with turnips! Passing by the turnip-pit, the bearers could not resist taking a few, for - as they explained — " it felt so mioghty empty!"

my bill to Bank and met it Honorable for it was in my Hearth an minde if ye wanted me to walk from here to Cork I wud not refus I have no more news but hoping that 15 may be worth £100 an wishin prosperity to ye an yer Famely your faithfull servant DANIEL M———.

Its two empirtnant intirely for me to ixpect a letter from ye Sir kno more at the prisent.

The next and last letter I will give you to read is from a tenant who buys turkeys each year for a friend of mine. The present ones seem to have been damaging the farmer's crops.

SIPTEMBER Friday 1884.

I hope this will find you in as gud healt as it laves me at the presint thank God Sind for the turkies at onst they ave the oats that flat I have boght ye 16 couple an a halve Captin at 4 shillins an nine pinse for too i gav wan shillin arnest minde that sind me a payhin I dont want a black payhin nor naither a white I wants a spheckled wan sind for them turkies an welcome at wanst shurely i remain Sir Yours thruly Tom McG.

them turkies ar small an fat an hav grate legs.

I have, I think, given sufficient reason to show that wit and honesty may still be found in dear old Ireland, and trust the perusal of these simple letters will afford amusement-though not in derision

the reader.

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And stretching to the sun, a boundless plain. Anon to Milton's thunder-song I thrilled,

From The Edinburgh Review. SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET.*

It often happens that some eminent characteristic of a great poet has almost escaped observation owing to the degree in which other characteristics, not higher but more attractive to the many, have also belonged to him. Spenser is an instance of this. If it were asked what chiefly constitutes the merit of his poetry, the answer would commonly be, its descriptive power, or its chivalrous sentiment, or its exquisite sense of beauty; yet the quality which he himself desiderated most for his chief work was one not often found in union with these, viz., sound and true philosophic thought. This is the characteristic which we propose to illustrate at present. It was the characteristic which chiefly won for him the praise of Shake speare:

These poets, however, came later than Spenser, and were not a little indebted to him, while yet they were, in some respects, unlike him. Some of them selected themes so abstract and metaphysical as to be almost beyond the limits of true poetic art. The difficulty was itself an attraction to them, and their ambition was more to instruct than to delight. Spenser loved philosophy as well as they, but was too truly a poet to allow of his following her when she strayed into "a barren and dry land," or of his adopting the didactic method when he illustrated philosophic themes. Truth and beauty are things correlative; and very profound truths can be elucidated in verse without the aid of such technical reasoning processes as those with which Dryden conducted his argument in "The Hind and Panther," and Pope in his essays. Spenser's Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such imagination never forsook the region of As, passing all conceit, needs no defence; the sympathies; but it had the special and it was doubtless the merit to which he gift of drawing within their charmed circle owed the influence which Milton acknowl- themes which for another poet must have edged that Spenser's poetry had exercised ever remained outside it, and of suffusing over his own. There is more of philos. them at once with the glow of passion ophy in one book of "The Faery Queen "and with the white light of high intellithan in all the cantos of his Italian mod-gence. It is true that he dealt much in els. In Italy the thinkers were generally allegory; but though allegory is commonly astute politicians or recluse theologians; a cold thing—always, indeed, if it be and her later poets, excepting of course mere allegory yet whenever Spenser's Tasso, cared more to amuse a brilliant genius is true to itself, his allegory catches court with song and light tale than to fol- fire, and raises to the heights of song low the steps of Dante along the summits themes which would otherwise have deof serious song. England, on the other scended to the level of ordinary prose. hand, uniting both the practical and the Had Spenser's poetry not included this meditative mind with the imaginative in- philosophic vein, it would not have been stincts of southern lands, had thereby in sympathy with a time which produced strengthened both that mind and those in- a Bacon, whose prose is often the noblest stincts, and thus occupied a position poetry, as well as a Sidney, whose life was neither above nor beneath the region of a poem. At the Merchant Taylors' Gramthoughtful poetry. In the latter part of mar School, Bishop Andrews and, as is the sixteenth and earlier part of the sev- believed, Richard Hooker, were among enteenth century, she possessed a consid- his companions; and when he entered erable number of poets who selected, Cambridge, Pembroke Hall was at least apparently without offence, very grave as much occupied with theological and themes for their poetry. It will suffice to metaphysical discussion as with classical name such writers as Samuel Daniel, literature. John Davies, George Herbert, Dr. Donne, Giles Fletcher, Habington, and, not much later, Dr. Henry More, the Platonist.

• The Works of Edmund Spenser. Edited by the Rev. Dr. GROSART. In 8 vols. London: 1883.

We may go further. It was in a large measure the strength of his human sympathies, which at once forced Spenser to include philosophy among the subjects of his poetry, and prevented that philosophy

from becoming unfit for poetry. As he great things" for two centuries after was eminently a poet of the humanities, Spenser had denounced the approaching so his philosophy was a philosophy of the imposture. That imposture is the one, humanities; he could no more have tak-now but too well known, which, in the en up a physiological theme for a poem, name of justice, substitutes for it the like Phineas Fletcher's "Purple Island," fiction of a universal equality in the interthan a geographical one, like Drayton's ests of which all human society hitherto "Polyolbion." The philosophy which in known is to be levelled down and remodterested him was that which "comes elled. Artegal, Spenser's emblem of jushome to the business and bosoms of men." tice, rides forth on his mission accompaIt was philosophy allied to life - philos- nied by his squire Talus, the iron man, ophy moral, social, and political. Such with the iron flail. On the seaside they philosophy is latent in all great poetry, descry "many nations" gathered tothough it is in some ages only that it be-gether: comes patent. It is with his political and social philosophy that we shall begin, proceeding afterwards to his philosophy of

man.

We know from Spenser's letter to Sir Walter Raleigh that to embody a great scheme of philosophy was the end which he proposed to himself in writing "The Faery Queen." That poem was to consist of twelve books; and the hero of each was to impersonate one of the twelve moral virtues enumerated by Aristotle. This poem he proposed to follow up by a second, the hero of which was to have been King Arthur after he had acceded to the throne, and which was to have illustrated the political virtues. We learn from Todd's "Life of Spenser " that at a party of friends held near Dublin, in the house of Ludowick Bryskett, the poet gave the same account of his poem, then unpublished, but of which a considerable part had been written. Bryskett, on that occasion, spoke of him as "not only perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well read in philosophy, both moral and

natural."

There they beheld a mighty gyant stand
Upon a rocke, and holding forth on hie
An huge great paire of ballaunce in his hand,
With which he boasted in his surquedrie
That all the world he would weigh equallie,
If aught he had the same to counterpoize;
For want whereof he weighed vanity,
And filled his ballaunce full of idle toys;

And

was admired much of fools, women, and

boys.

He sayd that he would all the earth uptake
And all the sea, divided each from either;
So would he of the fire one ballaunce make,
And of the ayre without or wind or weather:
Then would be ballaunce heaven and hell
together,

And all that did within them all containe;
Of all whose weight he would not misse a
fether;

And looke what surplus did of each remaine, He would to his own part restore the same againe.

Therefore the vulgar did about him flocke, And cluster thicke unto his leasings vaine, Like foolish flies about a hony-crocke In hope by him great benefit to gain.† The Knight of Justice here breaks in, and affirms that the giant ought before restoring everything to its original condition, to ascertain exactly "what was the poyse of every part of yore." The giant knows that the best mode to meet an unanswer

Unhappily, only half of the earlier romance was written, or at least has reached us, and no part of the second; but much which belongs to the subject of the sec ond poem may be found in fragments scat-able reply is by reiteration:tered over the six books of "The Faery Queen." One of these political fragments vindicates the old claim of poets to be prophets; for the great revolutionary dog. ma expounded in it is one which, though its earlier mutterings may have been heard at the time of the German Anabaptists, did not "open its mouth" and " 'speak

Therefore I will throw downe these moun.

tains hie,

And make them levell with the lowly plaine,
These towring rocks which reach unto the

skie,

I will thrust down into the deepest maine,

Pride.

† Faery Queen, Book V., canto ii., stanza 30.