quotation applicable to him from his works, and laying it before his image, to be read in the course of the evening.

XXXVII. LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY.

AMONG the pieces printed at the end of Chaucer's works, and attributed to him, is a translation, under this title, of a poem of the celebrated Alain Chartier, secretary to Charles the Sixth and Seventh. It was the title which suggested to a friend the verses at the end of our present number.* We wish Alain could have seen them. He would have found a Troubadour air for them, and sung them to La Belle Dame Agnes Sorel, who was, however, not Sans Mercy. The union of the imaginative and the real is very striking throughout, particularly in the dream. The wild gentleness of the rest of the thoughts and of the music are alike old, and they are also alike young; for love and imagination are always young, let them bring with them what times and accompaniments they may. If we take real flesh and blood with us, we may throw ourselves, on the facile wings of our sympathy, into what age we please. It is only by trying to feel,

The late Mr. Keats. This beautiful little effusion is reprinted in the Indicator, where it originally appeared, because it is not to be found in the collected works of that delightful poet.

as well as to fancy, through the medium of a costume, that writers become fleshless masks and cloaks-things like the trophies of the ancients, when they hung up the empty armour of an enemy.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;

And on thy cheek a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean and sing
A fairy's song.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes-
So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
Who cried, "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy
Hath thee in thrall !"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,

On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

"Caviare to the multitude."—Hamlet.

CAVIARE.*

The signature

was of Mr. Keats's own putting; a touching circumstance,

when we call to mind the treatment he met with, and consider how his memory has triumphed over it.

XXXVIII.-OF STICKS.

AMONG other comparative injuries which we are accustomed to do to the characters of things animate and inanimate, in order to gratify our human vanity, such as calling a rascal a dog (which is a great compliment), and saying that a tyrant makes a beast of himself (which it would be a very good thing, and a lift in the world, if he could), is a habit in which some persons indulge themselves, of calling insipid things and persons sticks. Such and such a one is said to write a stick; and such another is himself called a stick ;—a poor stick, a mere stick, a stick of a fellow.

We protest against this injustice done to those useful, and once flourishing sons of a good old stock. Take, for instance, a common cherry stick, which is one of the favourite sort. In the first place, it is a very pleasant substance to look at, the grain running round it in glossy and shadowy rings. Then it is of primæval antiquity, handed down from scion to scion through the most flourishing of genealogical trees. In the third place, it is of Eastern origin; of a stock, which it is possible may have furnished Haroun Al Raschid with a djereed, or Mahomet with a camelstick, or Xenophon in his famous retreat with fences, or Xerxes with tent-pins, or Alexander with a javelin, or Sardanapalus with tarts, or Solomon with a simile for his mistress's lips, or Jacob with a crook, or

Methusalem with shadow, or Zoroaster with mathematical instruments, or the builders of Babel with scaffolding. Lastly, how do you know but that you may have eaten cherries off this very stick; for it was Once alive with sap, and rustling with foliage, and powdered with blossoms, and red and laughing with fruit.

Where the leathern tassel now hangs, may have dangled a bunch of berries; and instead of the brass ferule poking in the mud, the tip was growing into the air with its youngest green.

The use of sticks in general is of the very greatest antiquity. It is impossible to conceive a state of society, in which boughs should not be plucked from trees for some purpose of utility or amusement. Savages use clubs, hunters require lances, and shepherds their crooks. Then came the sceptre, which is originally nothing but a staff, or a lance, or a crook, distinguished from others. The Greek word for sceptre signifies also a walking-stick. A mace, however plumped up and disguised with gilding and a heavy crown, is only the same thing in the hands of an inferior ruler; and so are all other sticks used in office, from the baton of the Grand Constable of France down to the tipstaff of a constable in Bow-street. As the shepherd's dog is the origin of the gentlest whelp that lies on a hearth-cushion, and of the most pompous barker that jumps about a pair of greys, so the merest stick used by a modern Arcadian, when he is driving his flock to Leadenhall-market with a piece of candle in his hat, and No. 554 on his arm, is the first great

VOL. I.