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More elegantly descriptive is the dress as now deli
neated :-

A russet stole was o'er her shoulders thrown,
A russet kirtle fenced the nipping air;
'Twas simple russet, but it was her own:
'Twas her own country bred the flock so fair,

'Twas her own labour did the fleece prepare, &c.

The additions made to the first edition consist of the 11,
12, 13, 14, and 15th stanzas, in which are so beautifully intro-
duced the herbs and garden stores, and the psalmody of the
schoolmistress; the 29th and 30th stanzas were also subse-
quent insertions. But those lines which give so original a
view of genius in its infancy,

A little bench of heedless bishops here,
And there a chancellor in embryo, &c.

were printed in 1742; and I cannot but think that the far-
famed stanza in Gray's Elegy, where he discovers men of
genius in peasants, as Shenstone has in children, was suggested
by this original conception :

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood,

is, to me, a congenial thought, with an echoed turn of expres-
sion of the lines from the School-Mistress.

I shall now restore the ludicrous INDEX, and adapt it to the
stanzas of the later edition.

Introduction

The subject proposed

A circumstance in the situation of the MANSION OF EARLY DISCIPLINE,
discovering the surprising influence of the connexions of ideas
A simile; introducing a deprecation of the joyless effects of BIGOTRY
and SUPERSTITION

Stanza

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

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8

9

Some peculiarities indicative of a COUNTRY SCHOOL, with a short sketch
of the SOVEREIGN presiding over it

Some account of her NIGHTCAP, APRON, and a tremendous description
of her BIRCHEN SCEPTRE

A parallel instance of the advantages of LEGAL GOVERNMENT with re-
gard to children and the wind.

Her gown

.

Her TITLES, and punctilious nicety in the ceremonious assertion of

them

A digression concerning her HEN's presumptuous behaviour, with a
circumstance tending to give the cautious reader a more accurate
idea of the officious diligence and economy of an old woman

10

Stanza

A view of this RURAL POTENTATE as seated in her chair of state, conferring HONOURS, distributing BOUNTIES, and dispersing PROCLA

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The ACTION of the poem commences with a general summons, follows a particular description of the artful structure, decoration, and fortifications of an HORN-BIBLE

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A surprising picture of sisterly affection by way of episode

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20, 21

22

23

A short list of the methods now in use to avoid a whipping-which nevertheless follows

The force of example

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A sketch of the particular symptoms of obstinacy as they discover themselves in a child, with a simile illustrating a blubbered face

A hint of great importance

24, 25, 26

The piety of the poet in relation to that school-dame's memory, who had the first formation of a CERTAIN patriot.

[This stanza has been left out in the later editions; it refers to the Duke of Argyle.]

The secret connexion between WHIPPING and RISING IN THE world, with a view, as it were, through a perspective, of the same LITTLE FOLK in the highest posts and reputation.

An account of the nature of an EMBRYO-FOX-HUNTER.

[Another stanza omitted.]

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A deviation to an huckster's shop.
Which being continued for the space of three stanzas, gives the author
an opportunity of paying his compliments to a particular county,
which he gladly seizes; concluding his piece with respectful men-
tion of the ancient and loyal city of SHREWSBURY.

27

28

32

BEN JONSON ON TRANSLATION.

I HAVE discovered a poem by this great poet, which has escaped the researches of all his editors. Prefixed to a translation, translation is the theme; with us an unvalued aft, because our translators have usually been the jobbers of booksellers; but no inglorious one among our French and Italian rivals. In this poem, if the reader's ear be guided by the compressed sense of the massive lines, he may feel a rhythm which, should they be read like our modern metre, he will find wanting; here the fulness of the thoughts forms their own cadences. The mind is musical as well as the ear. One verse running into another, and the sense often closing in the middle of a line, is the Club of Hercules; Dryden some

times succeeded in it, Churchill abused it, and Cowper attempted to revive it. Great force of thought only can wield this verse.

On the AUTHOR, WORKE, and TRANSLATOR, prefixed to the translation of Mateo Alemans's Spanish Rogue, 1623.

Who tracks this author's or translator's pen
Shall finde, that either hath read bookes, and men :
To say but one were single. Then it chimes,
When the old words doe strike on the new times,
As in this Spanish Proteus; who, though writ
But in one tongue, was formed with the world's wit:
And hath the noblest marke of a good booke,
That an ill man dares not securely looke
Upon it, but will loath, or let it passe,
As a deformed face doth a true glasse.
Such bookes deserve translators of like coate
As was the genius wherewith they were wrote;
And this hath met that one, that may be stil'd
More than the foster-father of this child;

For though Spaine gave him his first ayre and vogue
He would be call'd, henceforth, the English rogue,
But that hee's too well suted, in a cloth
Finer than was his Spanish, if my oath

Will be receiv'd in court; if not, would I

Had cloath'd him so! Here's all I can supply

To your desert who have done it, friend! And this
Faire æmulation, and no envy is;

When you behold me wish myselfe, the man
That would have done, that, which you only can!

BEN JONSON.

The translator of Guzman was James Mabbe, which he disguised under the Spanish pseudonym of Diego Puede-ser; Diego for James, and Puede-ser for Mabbe or May-be! He translated, with the same spirit as his Guzman, Celestina, or the Spanish Bawd, that singular tragi-comedy,-a version still more remarkable. He had resided a considerable time in Spain, and was a perfect master of both languages,— -a rare talent in a translator; and the consequence is, that he is a translator of genius.

502

THE LOVES OF "THE LADY ARABELLA.*

Where London's towre its turrets show

So stately by the Thames's side,
Faire Arabella, child of woe!

For many a day had sat and sighed.

And as shee heard the waves arise,

And as shee heard the bleake windes roare,
As fast did heave her heartfelte sighes,

And still so fast her teares did poure!

Arabella Stuart, in Evans's Old Ballads. (Probably written by Mickle.)

THE name of Arabella Stuart, Mr. Lodge observes, "is scarcely mentioned in history." The whole life of this lady seems to consist of secret history, which, probably, we cannot now recover. The writers who have ventured to weave together her loose and scattered story are ambiguous and contradictory. How such slight domestic incidents as her life consisted of could produce results so greatly disproportioned to their apparent cause may always excite our curiosity. Her name scarcely ever occurs without raising that sort of interest which accompanies mysterious events, and more particularly when we discover that this lady is so frequently alluded to by her foreign contemporaries.

The historians of the Lady Arabella have fallen into the grossest errors. Her chief historian has committed a violent injury on her very person, which, in the history of a female, is not the least important. In hastily consulting two passages relative to her, he applied to the Lady Arabella the defective understanding and headstrong dispositions of her aunt, the Countess of Shrewsbury; and by another misconception of a term, as I think, asserts that the Lady Arabella was distinguished neither for beauty nor intellectual qualities.t This authoritative decision perplexed the modern

* Long after this article was composed, Miss Aikin published her "Court of James the First." That agreeable writer has written her popular volumes without wasting the bloom of life in the dust of libraries; and our female historian has not occasioned me to alter a single sentence in these researches.

+ Morant in the "Biographia Britannica." This gross blunder has been detected by Mr. Lodge. The other I submit to the reader's judgment. A contemporary letter-writer, alluding to the flight of Arabella and Seymour, which alarmed the Scottish so much more than the English party,

editor, Kippis, whose researches were always limited; Kippis had gleaned from Oldys's precious manuscripts a single note which shook to its foundations the whole structure before him; and he had also found, in Ballard, to his utter confusion, some hints that the Lady Arabella was a learned woman, and of a poetical genius, though even the writer himself, who had recorded this discovery, was at a loss to ascertain the fact! It is amusing to observe honest George Ballard in the same dilemma as honest Andrew Kippis. "This lady," he says, "was not more distinguished for the dignity of her birth than celebrated for her fine parts and learning; and yet," he adds, in all the simplicity of his ingenuousness, "I know so little in relation to the two last accomplishments, that I should not have given her a place in these memoirs had not Mr. Evelyn put her in his list of learned women, and Mr. Philips (Milton's nephew) introduced her among his modern poetesses."

"The Lady Arabella," for by that name she is usually noticed by her contemporaries, rather than by her maiden name of Stuart, or by her married one of Seymour, as she latterly subscribed herself, was, by her affinity with James the First and our Elizabeth, placed near the throne; too near, it seems, for her happiness and quiet!* In their common descent from Margaret, the elder daughter of Henry the Seventh, she was cousin to the Scottish monarch, but

tells us, among other reasons of the little danger of the political influence of the parties themselves over the people, that not only their pretensions were far removed, but he adds, "They were UNGRACEFUL both in their persons and their houses." Morant takes the term UNGRACEFUL in its modern acceptation; but in the style of that day, I think UNGRACEFUL is opposed to GRACIOUS in the eyes of the people, meaning that their persons and their houses were not considerable to the multitude. Would it not be absurd to apply ungraceful in its modern sense to a family or house? And had any political danger been expected, assuredly it would not have been diminished by the want of personal grace in these lovers. I do not recollect any authority for the sense of ungraceful in opposition to gracious, but a critical and literary antiquary has sanctioned my opinion.

"She was the only child of Charles Stuart, fifth earl of Lennox, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Cavendish of Hardwick, in Derbyshire, and is supposed to have been born in 1577. Her father, unhappily for her, was of the royal blood both of England and Scotland; for he was a younger brother of King Henry, father of James the Sixth, and greatgrandson through his mother, who was daughter of Margaret, Queen of Scots, to our Henry the Seventh." Such is Lodge's account of "this illustrious misfortune," which made the life of a worthy lady wretched.

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