temper and affections, will make things go right without, in all the duties and acts of our callings. A CONTRACTED SPHERE NO SECURITY AGAINST WORLDLINESS. The heart may be engaged in a little business as much, if thou watch it not, as in many and great affairs. A man may drown in a little brook or pool, as well as in a great river, if he be down and plunge himself into it, and put his head under water. Some care thou must have, that thou mayest not care. Those things that are thorns indeed, thou must make a hedge of them, to keep out those temptations that accompany sloth, and extreme want that waits on it; but let them be the hedge: suffer them not to grow within the garden. ANNE KILLEGREW. Died 1685. THIS very accomplished young woman, whom Dryden has immortalized, was the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Henry Killegrew, one of the prebendaries of Westminster. She gave strong indications of genius at a very early age, and became equally eminent in the sister arts of poetry and painting, as well as distinguished for her unblemished virtue and exemplary piety, amid the seductions of a licentious court. She was one of the maids of honor to the Duchess of York, but was cut off in the midst of her usefulness and fame, falling a victim to the small-pox in the summer of 1685, in her twenty-fifth year. THE DISCONTENT. I. HERE take no care, take here no care, my Muse, Nor aught of art or labor use: But let thy lines rude and unpolish'd go, Nor equal be their feet, nor numerous let them flow. They'll livelier paint th' unequal paths fond mortals tread. Which flattering hope presents, Briskly they climb, and great things undertake; For 'tis not long before their feet Inextricable mazes meet; Perplexing doubts obstruct their way; In vain for aid they then to reason call, And headlong down the horrid precipice they fall: Where rapid streams of tears do flow, Which drown them in a briny flood. My Muse, pronounce aloud, there's nothing good, II. Not boundless heaps of its admired clay, When spread in our frail virtue's way: Join'd in one mass, can bribe sufficient be, Or purchase for the mind's relief One moment's sweet repose, when restless made by grief, When some the price of what they dearest love Are masters of, and hold it in their hand, To part with it their hearts they can't command: Wise fools, to do them right, we these must hold, IV. But, oh, the laurell'd fool! that doats on fame, Of what he does, what others say, And all for praise of fools! for such are those, Or calm a stormy breast, Which asks a music soft and still. 'Twas not Amalek's vanquish'd cry, Nor Israel's shouts of victory, That could in Saul the rising passion lay; 'Twas the soft strains of David's lyre the evil spirit chased away VI. Is there that earth by human foot ne'er press'd? That air which never yet by human breast Respired, did life supply? Oh! thither let me fly! Where from the world at such a distance set, All that's past, present, and to come, I may forget; The lover's sighs, and the afflicted's tears, The grating noise of private jars, The word, the look that may deceive. EDMUND WALLER hardly deserves a place among the best names in Eng lish literature, either as a poet or as a man; and in giving him a small space here, I yield my own judgment to that of Dryden and Pope. He was born in 1605, studied at Cambridge, and was admitted into parliament as early as his eighteenth year. In political life he was a mere time-server, veering from the king to the parliament, and from the parliament to the king, as each might happen for the time to possess the ascendency. As a member of par liament he at first took the popular side, but soon after he joined in a plot to let the king's forces into the city, for which he was tried and sentenced to one year's imprisonment, and to pay a fine of £10,000, and it is said that he spent three times that sum in bribes. He acquired the means to do this from hav ing married in 1630 a rich heiress of London, who died the same year. After his release from prison he went to France, where it is said he lived on the proceeds of his wife's jewels which he took with him. At the Restoration he returned, and wrote a congratulatory address to Charles II., as he had before done to Cromwell; and when the monarch frankly told him how inferior the verses in his own praise were to those addressed to his predecessor, the hollow-hearted, selfish sycophant replied, "Poets, sire, succeed better in fiction than in truth." Of his conduct when in parliament, Bishop Burnet says, "He never laid the business of the House to heart, being a vain and empty, though a witty man." On the accession of James II, though eighty years of age, he was elected representative for a borough in Cornwall; but he did not live to wit ness the glorious Revolution, having died the year before, October 21, 1687. As a poet, Waller is certainly "smooth," as Pope styles him, and compara ively destitute of that affectation which characterizes most of his contemporaries. "If he rarely sinks, he never rises very high; and we find much good sense and selection, much skill in the mechanism of language and metre, without ardor and without imagination. In his amorous poetry he has little passion or sensibility; but he is never free and petulant, never tedious, and never absurd. His praise consists much in negations." The following is a portion of what I deem his best piece, his Eulogy on Cromwell. "Of these lines," says Dr. Johnson, "some are grand, some are graceful, and all are musical." 1 Hallam's "Introduction to the Literature of Europe," ii. 372, Harper's edition A PANEGYRIC TO MY LORD PROTECTOR Let partial spirits still aloud complain; Things of the noblest kind our own soil breeds; Your never-failing sword made war to cease; Less pleasure take brave minds in battles won, To pardon, willing; and to punish, loath; You strike with one hand, but you heal with both. Your private life did a just pattern give. Finds no distemper while 'tis changed by you; Changed like the world's great scene! when, without noise, Had you, some ages past, this race of glory Run, with amazement we should read your story: Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, Here in low strains your milder deeds we sing; To crown your head: while you in triumph ride Like Joseph's sheaves, pay reverence and bow. Of his shorter pieces, the following has been pronounced "one of the most graceful poems of an age from which a taste for the highest poetry was fast vanishing." |