saved out fa small income. His portrait in the 'Castle of Indolence' is in Thomson's happiest manner:

With him was sometimes joined in silent walk-
Profoundly silent, for they never spoke-
One shyer still, who quite detested talk;
Oft stung by spleen, at once away he broke

To groves of pine and broad o'ershadowing oak;
There, inly thrilled, he wandered all alone,"

And on himself his pensive fury wroke,

Nor ever uttered word, save when first shone

The glittering star of eve-Thank Heaven, the day is done!'

Warton has praised the Art of Preserving Health' for its classical correctness and closeness of style, and its numberless poetical images. In general, however, it is stiff and laboured, with occasional passages of tumid extravagance; and the images are not unfrequently echoes of those of Thomson and other poets. The subject required the aid of ornament, for scientific rules are in general bad themes for poetry, and few men are ignorant of the true philosophy of life, however they may deviate from it in practice. Armstrong was no ascetic philosopher. His motto is, 'Take the good the gods provide you,' but take it in moderation.

When you smooth

The brows of care, indulge your festive vein
In cups by well-informed experience found
The least your bane, and only with your friends.

The effects of over-indulgence in wine he has finely described:

But most too passive, when the blood runs low
Too weakly indolent to strive with pain,

And bravely by resisting conquer fate,

Try Circe's arts; and in the tempting bowl
Of poisoned nectar sweet oblivion swill.

Struck by the powerful charm, the gloom dissolves
In empty air; Elysium opens round,

A pleasing frenzy buoys the lightened soul,
And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care:
And what was difficult, and what was dire,
Yields to your prowess and superior stars:
The happiest you of all that e'er were mad,
Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.

But soon your heaven is gone: a heavier gloom
Shuts o'er your head; and, as the thundering stream,
Swollen o'er its banks with sudden mountain rain,
Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook,

So, when the frantic raptures in your breast

Subside, you languish into mortal man;
You sleep, and waking find yourself undone,
For, prodigal of life, in one rash night

You favished more than might support three days.
A heavy morning comes; your cares return
With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well
May be endured; so may the throbbing head;
But such a dim delirium, such a dream,
Involves you; such a dastardly despair
Unmans your soul, as maddening Penthens felt,
When, baited round Citharon's cruel sides,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes ascend.

In prescribing as a healthy situation for residence a house on an elevated part of the sea-coast, he indulges in a vein of poetical luxury worthy the enchanted grounds of the 'Castle of Indolence:'

Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all

The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm;
To sink in warm repose, and hear the din
Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights
Above the luxury of vulgar sleep.

The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain
Of waters rushing o'er the slippery rocks,
Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest.

To please the fancy is no trifling good,

Where health is studied; for whatever moves

The mind with calm delight, promotes the just

And natural movements of the harmonious frame.

In his first book, Armstrong has penned a ludicrously pompous invective on the climate of Great Britain, 'steeped in continual rains, or with raw fogs bedewed.' He exclaims:

Our fathers talked

Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene⚫
Good Heaven! for what unexpiated crimes
This dismal change! The brooding elements,
Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath,
Prepare some fierce exterminating plague?
Or is it fixed in the decrees above,
That lofty Albion melt into the main?
Indulgent nature! Oh, dissolve this gloom;
Bind in eternal adamant the winds

That drown or wither; give the genia! west
To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly north,
And may once more the circling seasons rule
The year, not mix in every monstrous day!

Now, the fact, we believe, is, that in this country there are more enjoyable days in the year than in any other country in Europe. (See the opinion of Charles II. ante.) Two extracts from the 'Art of Preserving Health' are subjoined. The second, which is certainly the most energetic passage in the whole poem, describes the 'sweating sickness' which appeared in England in August 1485, among the troops of Henry VII. who fought at Bosworth field. It desolated parts of England, but did not penetrate into Scotland or Ireland.

Wrecks and Mutations of Time.

What does not fade? The tower that long had stood

The crush of thunder and the warring winds,,

Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time,

Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base,

And flinty pyramids and walls of brass
Descend. The Babylonian spires are sunk;
Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.
Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old,
And all those worlds that roll around the sun;
The sun himself shall die, and ancient night

Again involve the desolate abyss,

Till the great Father, through the lifeless gloom,
Extend his arm to light another world

And bid new planets roll by other laws.

Pestilence of the Fifteenth Century.

Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent
Their ancient rage at Bosworth's purple field;
While, for which tyrant England should receive,
Her legions in incestuous murders mixed
And daily horrors; fill the fates were drunk
With kindred blood by kindred hands profused:
Another plague of more gigantic arm
Arose, a monster never known before,
Reared from Cocytus its portentous head ;
This rapid fury not, like other pests,
Pursued a gradual conrse, but in a day

Rushed as a storm o'er half the astonished isle,
And strewed with sudden carcasses the land.
First through the shoulders, or whatever part
Was seized the first, a fervid vapour sprung;
With rash combustion thence, the quivering spark
Shot to the heart, and kindled all within;
And soon the surface caught the spreading fires.
Through all the yielding pores the melted blood
Gushed out in smoky sweats; but nought assuaged
The torrid heat within, nor aught relieved
The stomach's anguish. With incessant toil,
Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain,

They to-sed from side to side. In vain the stream
Ran full and clear; they burnt, and thirsted still.

The restless arteries with rapid blood

Beat strong and frequent. Thick and pantingly

The breath was fetched, and with huge labourings heaved. At last a heavy pain oppressed the head,

A wild delirium came: their weeping friends

Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs.
Harassed with toil on toil, the sinking powers
Lay prostrate and o'erthrown; a ponderons sleep
Wrapt all the senses up: they slept and died.
In some a gentle horror crept at first
O'er all the limbs; the sluices of the skin
Withheld their moisture, till by art provoked
The sweats o'erflowed, but in a clammy tide;
Now free and copious, now restrained and slow;

Of tinctures various, as the temperature

Had mixed the blood, and rank with fetid streams:
As if the pent-up humours by delay

Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign.
Here lay their hopes (though little hope remained),

With full effusion of perpetual sweats

To drive the venom out. And here the fates

Were kind, that long they lingered not in pain.

For, who survived the sun's diurnal race,

Rose from the dreary gates of hell redeemed;

Some the sixth hour oppressed, and some the third.
Of many thousands, few untainted 'scaped;

Of those infected. fewer 'scaped alive;
Of those who lived, some felt a second blow;
And whom the second spared, a third destroyed,
Frantic with fear, they sought by flight to shun

The fierce contagion. O'er the mournful land
The infected city poured her hurrying swarms:
Roused by the flames that fired her seats around,
The infected country rushed into the town.
Some sad at home, and in the desert some
Abjured the fatal commerce of mankind.

In vain; where'er they fled, the fates pursued.
Others, with hopes more specious, crossed the main,
To seek protection in far-distant skies:

But none they found. It seemed the general air,
From pole to pole; from Atlas to the east,
Was then at enmity with English blood:
For but the race of England all were safe

In foreign climes; nor did this fury taste

The foreign blood which England then contained.
Where should they fly? The circumambient heaven
Involved them still, and every breeze was bane:
Where find relief? The salutary art

Was mute, and, startled at the new disease,

In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.

To Heaven, with suppliant rites they sent their prayers;
Heaven heard them not. Of every hope deprived,
Fatigued with vain resources, and subdued

With woes resistless, and enfeebling fear,
Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
Nothing but lamentable sounds were heard,
Nor aught was seen but ghastly views of death.
Infectious horror ran from face to face,
And pale despair. Twas all the business then
To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
In heaps they fell; and oft the bed, they say,
The sickening, dying, and the dead contained.

SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE.

Few votaries of the muses have had the resolution to abandon their early worship, or to cast off the Delilahs of the imagination,' when embarked on more gainful callings. An example of this, however, is afforded by the case of SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE-born in London in 1723, died 1780-who, having made choice of the law for his profession, and entered himself a student of the Middle Temple, took formal leave of poetry in a copy of natural and pleasing verses, published in Dodsley's Miscellany. Blackstone rose to rank and fame as a lawyer, wrote a series of masterly commentaries on the laws of England, was knighted, and died a judge in the court of Common Pleas. From some critical notes on Shakspeare by Sir William, published by Stevens, it would appear that, though he had forsaken his muse, he still-like Charles Lamb, when he had given up the use of the great plant' tobacco-loved to live in the suburbs of her graces.'

The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse.

As by some tyrant's stern command,
A wretch forsakes his native land,
In foreign climes condemned to roam
An endless exile from his home;
Pensive he treads the destined way,
And dreads to go; nor dares to stay;

Till on some neighbouring mountain's
brow

He stops, and turns his eyes below;
There, melting at the well-known view,
Drops a last tear, and bids adieu :
So I, thus doomed from thee to part,

Gay queen of fancy and of art,
Reluctant move, with doubtful mind,
Oft stop, and often look behind.
Companion of my tender age,
Serenely gay, and sweetly cage,
How blithesome we were wont to rove,
By verdant hill or shady grove,
Where fervent bees, with humming voice,
Around the honied oak rejoice,
And aged elms with awful bend,
In long cathedral waiks extend!
Lulled by the lapse of gliding floods,
Cheered by the warbling of the woods,
How blest my days, my thoughts how
free,

In sweet society with thee!

And points with tottering hand the ways
That lead me to the thorny maze.
There, in a winding close retreat,
Is Justice doomed to fix her seat;
There, fenced by bulwarks of the law,
She keeps the wondering world in awe;
And there, from vulgar sight retired,
Like Eastern queen, is more admired.
Oh, let me pierce the secret shade
Where dweils the venerable maid!
There humbly mark, with reverent awe,
The guardian of Britann a's law;
Untold with joy her sacred page,
The united boast of many an age;
Where mixed, yet uniform, appears
The wisdom of a thousand years.
In that pure spring the bottom view,
Clear, deep. aud regularly true;
And other doctrines thežice imbibe

Then all was joyous, all was young,
And years unhe ded rolled along:
But now the pleasing dream is o'er,
These scenes must charm me now no Than lurk within the sordid scribe:

more;

Lost to the fields, and torn from you-
Farewell!-a long, a last adieu.
Me wrangling courts, and stubborn law,
To smoke, and crowds, and cities draw:
There selfish faction rules the day,
And pride and avar ce throng the way;
Diseases taint the murky air,
And midnight conflagrations glare;
Loose Revelry, and Riot bo'd,
In frighted streets their orgies hold;
Or, where in silence all is drowned,
Fell Murder walks his lonely round;
No room for peace, no room for you;
Adieu, celestial nymph, adieu!
Shakspeare, no more thy sylvan son,
Nor all the art of Addison,
Pope's heaven-strung lyre, nor Waller's

ease,

Nor Milton's mighty self must please:
Instead of these, a form: I band'
In furs and coifs around me stand;
With sounds uncouth and accents dry,
That grate the soul of harmony.
Each pedant sage unlocks his store
Of mystic, dark, discordant lore,

Observe how parts with parts unite
In one harmonious rule of right;
See countless wheels distinctly tend
By various laws to one great end;
While mighty Alf ed's piercing soul
Pervades and regulates the whole.
Then welcome ousiness, welcome strife,
Welcome the cares, the thorns of life,
The visage wan, the pore-blind sight,
The toil by day, the lamp at night,
The tedious forms, the solemn prate,
The pert dispute, the dull debate,
The drowsy bench, the babbling hall,
For thee, fair Justice, welcome all!
Thus though my noon of life be past,
Yet let my setting sun, at last
Find out the still, the rural cell.
Where sage retirement loves to dwell!
There let me taste the home-felt bliss
Of innocence and inward peace;
Untainted by the guilty bribe,
Uncursed among the harpy tribe;
No orphan's cry to wound my ear;
My honour and my conscience clear.
Thus may I calmly ineet my end,
Thus to the grave in peace descend.

DR. JAMES GRAINGER.

JAMES GRAINGER (circa 1721-1766) was, according to his own statement, seen by Mr. Prior, the biographer of Goldsmith, of a gentleman's family in Cumberland.' He studied medicine in Edinburgh, was in the army, and, on the peace, established himself as a medical practitioner in London. His poem of Solitude' appeared in 1755, and was praised by Johnson, who considered the opening 'very noble.' Grainger wrote several other pieces, translated Tibullus, and was a critic in the Monthly Review.' In 1759, he went to St. Christopher's in the West Indies, commenced practicing as a physician, and married a lady of fortune, During his residence there, he wrote his