In travail, as in tears,
With the fardel of her years
Overprest,-

In mercy was she borne

Where the weary ones and worn
Are at rest.

I'm fain to meet you there; -
If as witching as you were,
Grandmamma!

This nether world agrees

That the better it must please
Grandpapa.

XVI-571

D

ADVICE TO A POET

EAR Poet, never rhyme at all:

But if you must, don't tell your neighbors;

Or five in six, who cannot scrawl,

Will dub you donkey for your labors.

This epithet may seem unjust

To you or any verse-begetter:
Oh, must we own-I fear we must!-
That nine in ten deserve no better.

Then let them bray with leathern lungs,

And match you with the beast that grazes;

Or wag their heads, and hold their tongues,
Or damn you with the faintest praises.

Be patient, you will get your due

Of honors, or humiliations;

So look for sympathy-but do

Not look to find it from relations.

When strangers first approved my books,

My kindred marveled what the praise meant,

They now wear more respectful looks,

But can't get over their amazement.

Indeed, they've power to wound, beyond
That wielded by the fiercest hater;
For all the time they are so fond -

Which makes the aggravation greater.

Most warblers now but half express

The threadbare thoughts they feebly utter:

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If they attempted naught-or less!

They would not sink, and gasp, and flutter. Fly low, my friend; then mount, and win

The niche for which the town's contesting: And never mind your kith and kin

But never give them cause for jesting.

A bard on entering the lists

Should form his plan; and having conned it,
Should know wherein his strength consists,
And never, never go beyond it.
Great Dryden all pretense discards;

Does Cowper ever strain his tether?
And Praed (Watteau of English Bards) —
How well he keeps his team together!

Hold Pegasus in hand-control

A vein for ornament ensnaring;

Simplicity is still the soul

Of all that Time deems worth the sparing.

Long lays are not a lively sport;

Reduce your own to half a quarter:
Unless your public thinks them short,
Posterity will cut them shorter.

I look on bards who whine for praise
With feelings of profoundest pity:
They hunger for the poet's bays,

And swear one's spiteful when one's witty.
The critic's lot is passing hard:

Between ourselves, I think reviewers,
When called to truss a crowing bard,

Should not be sparing of the skewers.

We all the foolish and the wise-
Regard our verse with fascination,
Through asinine paternal eyes,

And hues of Fancy's own creation;
Then pray, sir, pray, excuse a queer

And sadly self-deluded rhymer,
Who thinks his beer (the smallest beer!)
Has all the gust of alt hochheimer.

Dear Bard, the Muse is such a minx,

So tricksy, it were wrong to let her

Rest satisfied with what she thinks

Is perfect: try and teach her better.
And if you only use, perchance,

One half the pains to learn that we, sir,
Still use to hide our ignorance -

How very clever you will be, sir!

THE JESTER'S PLEA

[These verses were published in a volume by several hands, issued for the benefit of the starving Lancashire weavers during the American Civil War.]

It is an ugly world. Offend

Good people-how they wrangle!

The manners that they never mend!

The characters they mangle!

They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,

And go to church on Sunday;

And many are afraid of God

And more of Mrs. Grundy.

The time for Pen and Sword was when

"My ladye fayre" for pity

Could tend her wounded knight, and then

Grow tender at his ditty!

Some ladies now make pretty songs,

And some make pretty nurses;
Some men are good for righting wrongs
And some for writing verses.

I wish We better understood
The tax that poets levy!

I know the Muse is very good-
I think she's rather heavy.

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She now compounds for winning ways
By morals of the sternest:
Methinks the lays of nowadays
Are painfully in earnest.

When Wisdom halts, I humbly try
To make the most of Folly;
If Pallas be unwilling, I

Prefer to flirt with Polly:
To quit the goddess for the maid
Seems low in lofty musers;
But Pallas is a haughty jade—

And beggars can't be choosers.

I do not wish to see the slaves
Of party, stirring passion;
Or psalms quite superseding staves,
Or piety "the fashion."

I bless the hearts where pity glows,
Who, here together banded,
Are holding out a hand to those
That wait so empty-handed!

A righteous work!- My Masters, may
A Jester by confession,

Scarce noticed join, half sad, half gay,
The close of your procession?

The motley here seems out of place
With graver robes to mingle;
But if one tear bedews his face,

Forgive the bells their jingle.

གླུ

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

(1794-1854)

CHE poet and essayist John Gibson Lockhart is a striking example of the class of men of no mean literary attainments whose names have been overshadowed by being connected with one greater than themselves. He is generally remembered as the biographer and son-in-law of Walter Scott. He is less often named as the admirable translator of the 'Spanish Ballads,' and still more seldom spoken of as the scholarly editor

of the Quarterly Review. Yet he was one of the most brilliant and most versatile of the lesser men of English literature.

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JOHN G. LOCKHART

Lockhart was born in the manse of Cambusnethan in Lanarkshire, where his father was then a minister of the gospel. years later the preacher was transferred to Glasgow, and here presently the boy entered the High School, and in time the Glasgow College. He was remarkably clever,-endowed with such unusual powers of concentration and memory that study seemed no effort; and he seemed to idle through his class hours, chiefly employed in drawing caricatures of the instructors. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, when just past fourteen; an unusually early age even for those days. He was well equipped in languages, ancient and modern, and had a store of curious information picked up in voracious reading; but he cared little for mathematics, excellence in which was greatly insisted upon. He continued caricaturing his tutors, and playing other harmless jokes upon them; for he had an irrepressibly frolicsome turn of mind, and was unconsciously developing his vein of satire and sarcasm. But he was proud and reserved, and of a constitutional shyness that remained with him all his life.

After graduation, he went to the Continent on money advanced by Blackwood for a prospective translation of Friedrich Schlegel's 'Lectures on the Study of History,' his first essay in authorship,- which however did not appear until some years later. He visited Goethe at Weimar, and went through France and the Netherlands studying art