While visions, as poetic eyes avow, Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. At the foot of one of these squats me I, (Il penseroso,) and there grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve; but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there. In this situation I often converse with my Horace, aloud too, that is, talk to you, but I do not remember that I ever heard you answer me. I beg pardon for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is entirely your own fault. I shall be in town in about three weeks. Adieu. September, 1737. NETLEY ABBEY AND SOUTHAMPTON.-BEAUTIFUL SUNSET. TO MR. NICHOLLS. I received your letter at Southampton, and as I would wish to treat everybody according to their own rule and measure of good breeding, have, against my inclination, waited till now before I answered it, purely out of fear and respect, and an ingenious diffi dence of my own abilities. If you will not take this as an excuse, accept it at least as a well-turned period, which is always my principal concern. So I proceed to tell you that my health is much improved by the sea; not that I drank it, or bathed in it, as the common people do: no! I only walked by it, and looked upon it. The climate is remarkably mild, even in October and November; no snow has been seen to lie there for these thirty years past; the myrtles grow in the ground against the houses, and Guernsey lilies bloom in every window; the town, clean and well-built, surrounded by its old stone walls, with their towers and gateways, stands at the point of a peninsula, and opens full south to an arm of the sea, which, having formed two beautiful bays on each hand of it, stretches away in direct view till it joins the British Channel: it is skirted on either side with gently-rising grounds, clothed with thick wood, and directly cross its mouth rise the high lands of the Isle of Wight at distance, but distinctly seen. In the bosom of the woods (concealed from profane eyes) lie hid the ruins of Netley Abbey; there may be richer and greater houses of reli gion, but the Abbot is content with his situation. See there, at the top of that hanging meadow, under the shade of those old trees that bend into a half circle about it, he is walking slowly, 1 The same ludicrous expression is met with in Foote's play of 'The Knights,' p. 27, from the month of Sir Penurious Trifle :-'And what does me I, but take a trip to a coffee-house in St. Martin's Lane,' &c. See also 'Don Quixote' by Smollet, vol. iv. p. 30."-Milford. 2 Rector of Lounde and Bradwell, in Suffolk. Hls acquaintance with Mr. Gray commenced a few years before the date of this, when he was a student in Cambridge (good man!) and bidding his beads for the souls of his benefactors, P. S.-I must not close my letter without giving you one principal event of my history; which was, that (in the course of my late tour) I set out one morning before five o'clock, the moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal air, and got to the sea-coast time enough to be at the sun's levee. I saw the clouds and dark vapors open gradually to right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide, (as it flowed gently the sand,) first whitening, then slightly tinged with gold and blue; and all at once a little line of insufferable brightness that (before I can write these five words) was grown to half an orb, and now to a whole one, too glorious to be distinctly seen.1 It is very odd it makes no figure on paper; yet I shall remember it as long as the sun, or at least as long as I endure. I wonder whether anybody ever saw it before? I hardly believe it. in upon TO MR. NICHOLLS, ON THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. It is long since that I heard you were gone in haste into Yorkshire on account of your mother's illness, and the same letter informed me that she was recovered, otherwise I had then wrote to you only to beg you would take care of her, and to inform you that I had discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in one's whole life one can never have any more than a single mother You may think this is obvious, and (what you call) a trite observation. You are a green gosling! I was at the same age (very near) as wise as you, and yet I never discovered this (with full evidence and conviction I mean) till it was too late. It is thirteen years ago, and seems but as yesterday, and every day I live it 1 See a description of similar beauty by Jeremy Taylor, p. 223, under “Dawn and Frogicas ef Reason." sinks deeper into my heart. Many a corollary could I draw from this axiom for your use, (not for my own,) but I will leave you the merit of doing it for yourself. TO MR. MASON, ON THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE. I break in upon you at a moment when we least of all are permitted to disturb our friends, cnly to say, that you are daily and hourly present to my thoughts. If the worst be not yet past, you will neglect and pardon me: but if the last struggle be over; if the poor object of your long anxieties be no longer sensible to your kindness, or to her own sufferings, allow me (at least in idea, for what could I do were I present more than this?) to sit by you in silence, and pity from my heart not her, who is at rest, but you, who lose her. May He, who made us, the Master of our pleasures and of our pains, preserve and support you! Adieu! I have long understood how little you had to hope. March 28, 1767. TOBIAS SMOLLET. 1721-1771. TOBIAS SMOLLET was descended of a family of some note in Dumbartonshire, Scotland, and passed his earliest years along the banks of the Leven. He early showed a genius for poetry, but on finishing his academical education, he was put apprentice to a surgeon, and pursued his professional studies with diligence, till the death of his grandfather, on whom he had depended, left him without the means of support, and he went to London. Not being able to get literary employment, he accepted an appointment as surgeon'smate on board a man-of-war. But his literary taste prevailed over his profes sional, and quitting the service he returned to London in 1746, and soon be came one of the most successful authors of the day. Novels, plays, and a "History of England" were produced in rapid succession, and added largely to his income. After a life of most checkered character, having suffered long from ill health, he set out for Italy in 1770, in hopes to receive benefit from that climate; but after a short residence in the neighborhood of Leghorn in very distressed circumstances, he died October 21, 1771. As a novelist, Smollet's reputation, once very high, is growing less every year with the best portion of the reading world, and must continue to do so as a love of moral purity shall continue to increase: for "indecency and "He seldom mentioned his mother without a sigh. After his death her gowns and wearing appa Lel were found in a trunk in his apartments just as she had left them; it seemed as if he could never take the resolution to open it, in order to distribute them to his female relations, to whom, by his will, he bequeathed them."-Mason. 2 "As this little billet (which I received at the Hot Wells at Bristol) then breathed, and still seems to breathe, the very voice of friendship in its tenderest and most pathetic note, I cannot refrain from publishing it in this place. I opened it almost at the precise moment when it would necessarily be the most affecting."-Mason. filth" pervade all his fictitious writings. As an historian, he writes in a clear and easy style; but neither his temper of mind nor his pursuits qualified him for an historical writer. As a poet, though he takes not a very high rank, yet the few poems which he has left have a delicacy which is not to be found in his novels. THE TEARS OF SCOTLAND.2 Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn The wretched owner sees afar What boots it, then, in every clime, Through the wide-spreading waste of time, Thy towering spirit now is broke, The rural pipe and merry lay Oh! baneful cause, oh! fatal morn, 1 Read-Hazlitt's "English Comic Writers," whose opinion I here quote, being happy to say that I never read but one of Smollet's novels, and such was its character that I never wish to read another. 2 These fine verses were written in 1746, on the barbarities committed in the Highlands by order of the Duke of Cumberland, after the battle of Culloden. The dreadful cruelties practised upon the vanquished, made his name execrated throughout Scotland, and have fixed an indelible stain upon his memory. Read-Chambers's "History of the Rebellion," a small work replete with interest. When Smollet wrote this poem, he was, as mentioned in the above biographical sketch, a surgeon'smate, lately returned from service abroad. It is said that he originally finished the poem in stx stanzas; when, some one representing that such a diatribe against government might injure bis prospects, he sat down and added the still more pointed invective of the seventh stanza. The sons against their fathers stood, The pious mother, doom'd to death, While the warm blood bedews my veins, ODE TO LEVEN-WATER. On Leven's banks, while free to rove, Pure stream, in whose transparent wave My youthful limbs I wont to lave; No torrents stain thy limpid source, No rocks impede thy dimpling course, That sweetly warbles o'er its bed, With white, round, polish'd pebbles spread; While, lightly poised, the scaly brood In myriads cleave thy crystal flood; The springing trout, in speckled pride, The salmon, monarch of the tide; The ruthless pike, intent on war, The silver eel, and mottled par. Devolving from thy parent lake, A charming maze thy waters make, By bowers of birch, and groves of pine, And edges flower'd with eglantine. Still on thy banks so gayly green, May numerous herds and flocks be seen: And heart resolved, and hands prepared, |