Lo! a sailing swan, with a little fleet Of cygnets by her side, Pushing her snowy bosom sweet And see-was ever a lovelier sight? One little bird afloat On its mother's back, 'neath her wing so white,— A beauteous living boat! The threatful male, as he sails ahead, He tramples the stream, as we pass him by, Gracefully, gracefully glides our bark, Oh, there's many a charming scene to mark The following powerful lines are better known, and serve to show the variety of Mr. Noel's talent. THE PAUPER'S DRIVE. There's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot; The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs, He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns. Oh, where are the mourners? Alas! there are none; He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns. What a jolting and creaking and splashing and din! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns. Poor pauper defunct! he has made some approach He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns. The author tells me that this incident was taken from the life. He witnessed such a funeral:-a coffin in a cart driven at full speed. But a truce to this strain! for my soul it is sad To think that a heart in humanity clad Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end, And depart from the light without leaving a friend. Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns. IV. OLD AUTHORS. ABRAHAM COWLEY. As in the case of Ben Jonson, posterity values his writings for very different qualities from those which obtained his high reputation amongst his contemporaries, so it has happened to Cowley. Praised in his day as a great poet, the head of the school of poets called metaphysical, he is now chiefly known by those prose essays, all too short and all too few, which, whether for thought or for expression, have rarely been excelled by any writer in any language. They are eminently distinguished for the grace, the finish, and the clearness which his verse too often wants. That there is one cry which pervades them-vanity of vanities! all is vanity!that there is an almost ostentatious longing for obscurity and retirement, may be accounted for by the fact that at an early age Cowley was thrown amongst the cavaliers of the civil wars, sharing the exile and the return of the Stuarts, and doubtless disgusted, as so pure a writer was pretty sure to be, by a dissolute Court, with whom he would find it easier to sympathize in its misery than in its triumph. Buckingham, with the fellow-feeling of talent for talent, appears to have been kind to him; and when he fled from the world (not very far, he found his beloved solitude at Chertsey), it is satisfactory to know that he so far escaped the proverbial ingratitude of the Restoration, to carry with him an income sufficient for his moderate wants. He did not long survive a retirement which, Sprat says, in a curious life prefixed to the edition of his works in 1719, "agreed better with his mind than his body." It is difficult to select from a volume so abundant in riches; but I will begin by his opinion of theatrical audiences contained in "The Preface to the Cutter of Coleman Street :" "There is no writer but may fail sometimes in point of wit; and it is no less frequent for the auditors to fail in point of judgment. I perceive plainly by daily experience that Fortune is mistress of the theatre, as Tully says it is of all popular assemblies. No man can tell sometimes from whence the invisible winds rise that move them. There are a multitude of people who are truly and only spectators of a play without any use of their understanding; and these carry it sometimes by the strength of their numbers. There are others who use their understandings too much; who think it a sign of weakness and stupidity to let anything pass by them unattacked, and that the honour of their judgment (as some mortals imagine of their courage) consists in quarrelling with everything. We are, therefore, wonderful wise men, and have a fine business of it, we who spend our time in poetry. I do sometimes laugh, and am often angry with myself when I think on it; and if I had a son inclined by nature to the same folly, I believe I should bind him from it by the strictest conjurations of a paternal blessing. For what can be more ridiculous than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour on their part more earnestly to take offence? to expose oneself voluntarily and frankly to all the dangers of that narrow passage to unprofitable fame, which is defended by rude multitudes of the ignorant, and by armed troops of the malicious? If we do ill, many discover it, and all despise us. If we do well, but few men find it out, and fewer entertain it kindly. If we commit errors, there is no pardon; if we could do wonders, there would be but little thanks, and that too extorted from unwilling givers." Of course his play had been coldly received. Here is another bit of autobiography, singularly |