at the time of family prayers. Hazlitt says: "The Cotter's Saturday Night is a noble and pathetic picture of human manners, mingled with a fine religious awe. It comes over the mind like a slow and solemn strain of music. The soul of the poet aspires from the scene of lowthoughted care, and reposes, in trembling hope, on the bosom of its Father and its God.'" Hardly anything can be more touching than the following stanzas, whether they describe human interests, or breathe a lofty, devotional spirit.

The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes,

This night his weekly moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,

And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.

At length his lonely cot appears in view,

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through
To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise and glee.

His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie,

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary, carking cares beguile,

An' makes him quite forget his labor and his toil.

Belyve the elder bairns come drapping in,

At service out, amang the farmers roun';
Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin
A cannie errand to a neebor town;

Their eldest hope, their Jennie, woman grown,

In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e,
Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw new gown,
Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee,

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

Wi' joy unfeign'd, brothers and sisters meet,
An' each for others' welfare kindly spiers;
The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnotic'd fleet;
Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears:

The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;
Anticipation forward points the view;

The mither, wi' her needle an' her shears,
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,
The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride:
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;

And "Let us worship God!" he says wi' solemn air.

Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays;
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"
That thus they all shall meet in future days:
There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise,

In such society, yet still more dear;

*

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.

2. Poems of a reflective or meditative character, or which are semi-didactic in their aim or tendency.—In this class is included a very large number of short poems, some of which possess high merit. Among the most remarkable of these we may mention two by Sir Walter Raleigh: The Soul's Errand and The Lye. We quote two stanzas from the latter:

Goe, soule, the bodies guest,
Upon a thankelesse arrant;
Feare not to touche the best,

The truth shall be thy warrant;
Goe, since I needs must dye,
And give the world the lye.

Goe, tell the court it glowes
And shines like rotten wood;
Goe tell the church it showes
What's good, and doth no good;
If church and court reply,

Then give them both the lye.

Another short poem, very similar in character, written as early as 1588 by one William Byrd, chaplain to the queen, is entitled My Mind to me a Kingdome Is:

My minde to me a kingdome is;
Such perfect joy therein I finde
As farre exceeds all earthly blisse,

That God or nature hath assignde:

Though much I want, that most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

Content I live, this is my stay;

I seek no more than may suffice;
I presse to beare no haughtie sway:
Look, what I lack my mind supplies.
Loe! thus I triumph like a king,

Content with that my mind doth bring.

The two poems last named are included in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.*

Among the longer poems of this class we shall include Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, published in four parts between 1812 and 1818. The plan of the poem is thus described by the author: "It was written, for the most part, amid the scenes which it attempts to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Spain and Portugal were composed from the author's observations in those countries. The scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and Greece; the third canto describes scenes in Belgium, Switzerland, and the Valley of the Rhine; and canto

* See page 306 of this volume.

A fictitious

four is chiefly occupied with Rome. character is introduced for the sake of giving some connection to the piece, which, however, makes no pretension to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinion I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, Childe Harold, I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage; this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim. Harold is the creation of the imagination for the purpose I have stated. In some trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, none whatever."

The poem is, in reality, nothing more than a series of gloomy but poetical meditations, strung together upon a slight thread of narrative, and relieved, now and then, by episodic pictures and passages of brilliant description. It is written in the nine-lined Spenserian stanza, a measure to which Byron was particularly partial; and in the beginning of the first canto the poet has endeavored still further to imitate Spenser by using quaint and obsolete words and forms of expression, such as are found in the Faerie Queene. But these affected archaisms are very soon. abandoned. The poem is, in great measure, particularly in the third canto, an autobiography, and, notwithstanding his disclaimer, which we have quoted above, the poet himself is the hero. For instance, no critic has ever written a more accurate or a more complete analysis of Byron's character than that which is found in the following stanzas:

Yet must I think less wildly :-I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of fantasy and flame:

And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poison'd. 'Tis too late!
Yet am I changed; though still enough the same
In strength to bear what time can not abate,
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.

But soon he knew himself the most unfit

Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held
Little in common; untaught to submit

His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell'd,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebell'd;
Proud though in desolation, which could find,
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.

Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,
And human frailties were forgotten quite:

Could he have kept his spirit to that flight
He had been happy; but this clay will sink.
Its spark immortal, envying it the light

To which it mounts, as if to break the link

That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.

But in Man's dwellings he became a thing
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,
Droop'd as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,
To whom the boundless air alone were home:
Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,
As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat
His breast and beak against his wiry dome
Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat
Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat.*

A contemporary critic, speaking of Byron's characteristic tendency to paint his own passions and to dwell upon. his own morbid inclinations, says: "It is not the passion. of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself, and disgusted with or indifferent to all other things. There is nothing less poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness. There is nothing more repulsive than this sort

* Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III., 7-15.