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when even Caxton, a printer, took Virgil's Æneid for so rare a novelty, are not less incomprehensible :-though these things I speak at random, nor have searched for the æra when the Greek and Latin classics came again to light-at present, I imagine, long after our Edward IV.

Another thing struck me in my very cursory perusal of Bryant. He asks where Chatterton could find so much knowledge of English events? I could tell him where he might, by a very natural hypothesis, though merely an hypothesis. It appears by the evidence that Canninge left six chests of MSS. and that Chatterton got possession of some, or several. Now what was therein so probably as a diary drawn up by Canninge himself, or some churchwarden or wardens, or by a monk or monks? Is any thing more natural, than for such a person, amidst the events of Bristol, to set down such other public facts as happened in the rest of the kingdom? Was not such almost all the materials of our ancient story! There is actually such an one, with some curious collateral facts, if I am not mistaken, for I write by memory, in the history of Furnese, or Fountaines Abbey; I forget which. If Chatterton found such an one, did he want the extensive literature on which such stress is laid? Hypothesis for hypothesis;--I am sure this is as rational an one, as the supposition that six chests were filled with poems never else heard of.

These are my indigested thoughts on this matter,-not that I ever intend to digest them--for I will not at sixty-four, sail back into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and be drowned in an ocean of monkish writers of those ages, or of this!

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"I DOUBT You are again in error, my good Sir, about the letter in the Gentleman's Magazine, against the Rowleians, unless Mr. Malone sent it to you; for he is the author, and not Mr. Steevens, from whom, I imagine, you received it. There is a report, that proof of some part of Chatterton's forgery is to be produced, from an accomplice; but this I do not answer for, nor know the circumstances. I have scarce seen a person who is not persuaded that the fashion of the poems was Chatterton's own; though he might have found some old stuff to work upon, which very likely was the case; but now that the poems have been so much examined, nobody (that has an ear) can get over the modernity of the modulation, and the

recent cast of the ideas and phraseology, corroborated by such palpable pillage of Pope and Dryden. Still the boy remains a prodigy, by whatever means he procured or produced the edifice he erected: and still it will be inexplicable how he found time or materials for operating such miracles. Yours ever,

H. W.

MR. EDITOR,

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S PRAYER.

At this momentous crisis, I trust that the following precatory address will readily find a place in your patriotic magazine. It is compounded of two prayers, made by Queen Elizabeth, at a former period of national trouble, and printed in Sorocold's "Supplications of Saints," of which a twenty-seventh edition appeared in 1642.

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QUEEN ELIZABETH'S PRAYER (for the success of her arms.) Most omnipotent Maker and Guider of all this world's mass! that alone searchest and fathomest the bottom of all hearts, and in them seest the true original of all actions intended. Thou, that by thy foresight dost truly discern, how no malice of revenge, nor quittance of injury, nor desire of bloodshed, nor greediness of lucre, hath bred the resolution of our now-collected army; but a heedful care and a wary watch, that no neglect of foes nor over-surety of harm, might breed either danger to us, or glory to them. We crave, with bowed knees and hearts of humility, thy large hand of helping power, to assist our just cause; not founded on pride's motion, nor begun on malice' stock, but (as thou best knowest to whom nought is hid) grounded on just defence from wrongs, from hate, and bloody desires of conquest.

These being the grounds, O God! [of our present warfare] since thou hast imparted means to defend that which thou hast given, we humbly beseech thee, with bended knees, prosper the work, speed the journey, give the victory, and make the return-the advancement of thy glory, the triumph of thy fame, and surety of the realm, with the least loss of English blood, to such as despise their lives for their country's good, in a good cause; that all foreign lands may laud and admire the omnipotency of thy work, a work for THEE only to perform. So shall thy name be spread, for wonders wrought, and the faithful encouraged to repose in thy unfellowed grace; and we be enchained in thy bonds for perpetual slavery, and live and die the sacrificers of our souls, for such obtained favour. To these devout petitions, Lord, give thy blessed grant. Amen.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE.

Qui monet quasi adjuvat.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Select Poems; by the Author of Indian Antiquities.

White. 1803.

8vo. 78,

OF Mr. Maurice's poems, of the vigour and spirit that distinguish them, of their moral tendency, and the uncommon melody of the versification, we have had more than one occasion of giving our unbiassed opinion. The present SELECTION is made with judgment, and consists of the most animated and polished in the larger collection, published some time since. The principal are the Crisis, written in 1788, on the threatened invasion of Britain by the French, and is, at this period, with great propriety reprinted, and placed foremost in the catalogue; the much admired Elegy on Sir William Jones; Westminster Abbey; the sublime Ode to Mithra; the School Boy, in imitation of the Splendid Shilling; and the Prospect of Life, painting the dark side of things strongly and justly.

The Crisis commences with the following energetic lines addressed to Mr. Pitt, at that time premier.

OH! THOU, whose laurels, through each circling year,
As long as Time rolls on his vast career,
While public virtue fires th' admiring soul,

Or Genius awes it with her strong control,

Shall brighter bloom,-Britannia's early pride,

Whose talents charm her, and whose counsels guide :

If the dark storms, that still o'er Europe lower,
For letter'd ease allow one transient hour;
If yet thy soul the heaven-born muse delight,
Sublime, of potent voice and eagle-flight,
When, fir'd in virtue's cause, she pours along
The thund'ring torrent of Tyrtæan song:
Immortal son of an immortal sire,

To thee that muse awakes the patriot lyre.
For others let the fragrant incense burn,
Wafted from adulation's flaming urn;
Unaw'd by menaces, unwarp'd by praise,
Proud sterling virtue seeks no borrow'd bays;
While Genius, tow'ring on its throne of light,
Shines, in its own transcendent lustre, bright;
The flame it feels through kindred bosoins spreads,
And wide the intellectual radiance sheds,
As yon bright orb that lights the distant pole,
And warms the glitt'ring spheres that round it roll.

Exhaustless, flames with undiminish'd beam,

Nor misses from its fount th' immortal stream.

The ferocity of democratic France, at the most ensanguined period of the revolution, is pourtrayed with a masterly pencil, and ought to serve as a dreadful warning to Britain.

Let the ferocious Gaul, with blood defil'd,
Stalk the first savage of the boundless wild;
With bold impiety his God blaspheme,
And brand religion as the bigots dream;
Let him, too faithful to his barb'rous creed,
And from the burning goad of conscience freed,
Rend all the sacred moral ties that bind
In chains of social intercourse, mankind;
With fire and sword the ravag'd globe deface,
The scourge and horror of the human race:
While the dire guillotine in secret gleams,

'Mid beauty's piercing shrieks and infant screams;
And countless victims, in the whelming wave

Plung'd headlong, make the frighed Soane their grave.
But Britons, faithful to the altar's fire,

Oh! still, with fervent zeal, to heaven aspire:
Close by that altar tow'rs a shrine sublime,

Whose adamant defies the rage of time,

To Liberty, that shrine your fathers rais'd,

And, while the radiant flame of incense blaz'd,

And, while they clash'd aloft the brandish'd sword,
To heav'ns high throne their ardent vows they pour'd;
Ceaseless to watch those sacred fires they swore,

To Freedom burning on her favourite shore;

And, with the noblest blood that warm'd their veins,
From insult guard Religion's hallow'd fanes.

Ever may Britons at those altars bend,

And with the Patriot's fire the Christian's blend;

Alike for virtue as for freedom glow,

And burst in vengeance on the ruffian foe,

Who, with envenom'd rage, those shrines surround,
Altars and thrones would level with the ground,

And on their smoking ruins rear on high

Far diff'rent fanes to brave th' insulted sky;
Fanes where dark Hecat', with her rav'ning brood,
Shall nightly quaff rich streams of infant blood;
Atheists their Maker curse; dire murderers yell;
And licens'd dæmons act the rites of hell!
Oh! born the guardian of our sinking state,
Born to snatch Europe from the jaws of fate,
With firmness, PITT, undaunted, persevere,
While righteous heav'n applauds and men revere;

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From Usurpation wrest her ill-got pow'r,
Chain down her vultures, burning to devour;
Bid Liberty the toiling slave illume,

And chase the horrors of the dungeon's gloom,

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Britons, the CRISIS of fate draws near,
Exalt your standards, grasp th' avenging spear;
In radiant arms indissolubly join'd,

Be firm, and brave the powers of earth combin'd.

The author then proceeds to describe the massacres and outrages committed by the French marauders in Austria and Italy, and is peculiarly animated in his description of the barbarities exercised in their desolating progress through Egypt.

Tremendous as the Samian's burning gales,
Whose fiery pinions sweep thy blasted vales,
Afric! the RAVAGER* of beggar'd Rome,

From whose high mandate empires wait their doom,
Infuriate bursting on thy sultry shores,

All the red phials of his vengeance pours.

Ye wretched offspring of a race renown'd,

For arts, for arms, to earth's remotest bound ;

Who gave to raptur'd Greece her lore sublime,

And roll'd their thunder through each distant clime;

Why, when auspicious Sirius' rising beam

Calls, from his mountains, Nile's redundant stream,
Why, as in gladden'd Egypt's ancient day,

Exalt ye not the loud exulting lay?

O'er Cairo's lofty tow'rs does famine spread

Her brooding wing, and heap her streets with dead,
Or, bursting Ethiopia's sultry bound,

Stalks the dark pestilence his nightly round,
A direr scourge than famine's vulture fangs,
Or baleful pestilence, o'er Egypt hangs!
Along her Nile what frantic shrieks resound
Of myriads plunging in her bed profound ;-
The crowded city, e sequester'd shade,
Alike the human cannibals invade;

Through Cairo's streets rolls down the crimson wave,
And Egypt, to her sons, is one vast grave.

Rise, swarthy hosts, in all the dreadful ire
Which nature and your torrid clime inspire!
Fierce as the wounded tiger scow'rs the plain,
Or baited lions, when they burst the chain,
Rush, rush in fury, on the blood-stain'd foe,'
Bear high the sabre, and strike deep the blow!
But, when those vanquish'd foes shall roll in dust,
And own, repentant, heaven's high vengeance just;

* Bonaparte.

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