fection in his Venice Preserved.' He pursued the murderer on foot, who fled to France, as far as Dover, where he was seized with a fever, occasioned by fatigue, which afterwards carried him to his grave in London." The robber, we find, is by this account a murderer, and as Dr. Warton was always more correct as to minor facts than Dr. Johnson, it is probable that he relates the story as he heard it; but it is to be traced to Spence, who was informed by Dennis, the critic, that "Otway had a friend, one Blakiston, who was shot; the murderer fled towards Dover, and Otway pursued him. In his return he drank water, when violently heated, and so got the fever which was the death of him." And Dennis, in the Preface to his " Observations on Pope's translation of Homer," 1717, 8vo, says, "Otway died in an alehouse," which is not inconsistent with the preceding account, as he generally lived in one; but whether the story of the guinea and the loaf can be introduced with any probability to heighten the poet's distress, we do not pretend to determine. It would not, perhaps, be very wrong to conjecture that both accounts might be true, but his contemporaries have left us no precise docu

ments. Dr. Johnson has remarked, that Otway appears by some of his verses to have been a zealous loyalist, and had what was, in those times, the common reward of loyalty, he lived and died neglected.

IRISH BARDS IN THE TIME OF ELIZABETH.

THE character of the Bard, once so deservedly reverenced in Ireland, began to sink into contempt in the reign of Elizabeth. The following is Spenser's animated description of this order in their fallen state, in which he sets forth his reasons for recommending their extirpation. In this, we shall find the poet lashing them without mercy; yet, at the same time, doing justice to their productions.

"There is among the Irish a certain kind of people called Bardes, which are to them instead of Poets, whose profession is to set forth the praises or dispraises of men, in their poems or rithmes; the which are had in so high regard and estimation amongst them, that none dare displease them for fear to run into reproach through their offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths of men. For their verses are taken up with a general applause, and usually

sung at all feasts and meetings by certain other persons, whose proper function that is; who, also, receive for the same great rewards and reputation amongst them." "These Irish bardes are, for the most part, so far from instructing young men, in moral discipline, that they themselves do more deserve to be sharply disciplined, for they seldom use to choose unto themselves the doings of good men for the arguments of their poems; but, whomsoever they find to be most licentious of life, most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him they set up and glorify in their rithmes, him they praise to the people, and to young men make an example to follow."-" For, being (as they all be) brought up idly, without awe of parents, without precepts of masters, and without fear of offence; not being directed nor employed in any course of life which may carry them to virtue; they will easily be drawn to follow such as any shall set up before them: for a young mind cannot rest; if he be not still busied in some goodness, he will find himself such business as shall soon busy all about him. In which, if he shall find any to praise him, and to

give him encouragement, as those bardes and rithmers do, for little reward, or a share of a stolne cow, then waxeth he most insolent and half mad with the love of himself, and his own lewd deeds. And, as for words to set forth such lewdness, it is not hard for them to give a goodly and painted shew thereunto, borrowed even from the praises which are proper to virtue itself; as of a most notorious thief and wicked outlaw, which had lived all his life time on spoils and robberies, one of their bardes, in his praise, will say, that he was none of the idle milk-sops that was brought up by the fire-side, but that most of his days he spent in arms and valiant enterprises; that he did never eat his meat before he had won it with his sword; that he lay not all night slugging in a cabin under his mantle, but used commonly to keep others waking to defend their lives, and did light his candle at the flames of their houses to lead him in the darkness; that the day was his night, and the night his day; that he loved not to be long wooing of wenches to yield to him, but where he came, he took by force the spoil of other men's love, and left but lamentation to their lovers ; that his music was not the harp, nor lays of love,

but the cries of people, and clashing of armour; and finally, that he died, not bewailed of many, but made many wail when he died, that dearly bought his death."

"I have caused divers of these poems," he concludes, "to be translated to me, that I might understand them; and surely they savoured of sweet wit and goodly invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry; yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and comliness unto them; the which, it is great pity to see so abused, to the gracing of wickedness and vice, which, with good usage, would serve to adorn and beautify virtue."

Such is the language in which our great poet speaks of his contemporary brethren in Ireland; such, too, is the language employed respecting them in one of those oppressive acts of parliament, which were about the same period assented to by the Earl of Desmond, in which it is declared "that these rymors do by their ditties and rhymes made to divers lords and gentlemen in Ireland, in the commendation and high praise of extorsion, rebellion, rape, raven, and other injustice, encourage those lords and gentlemen