In drawing from nature, common minds have not the talent of selecting features so as to form a picture; then, their own emotions are too unmarked, and the visions that flit before them are too dim to be embodied and reflected. But persons thus educated might at least learn, if they could not teach. They might make themselves masters of what books

could convey.

Wyat.-Books have been multiplied since my time to an innumerable extent; but we had then a sufficiency. I believe that sound knowledge has not much increased with the increase of volumes.

Daniel.You had not then the rich and diversified fictions of Spenser, nor the unrivalled inventions of Shakespeare.

Davies.-Nor the divine poem of Milton.

Warton. But you had Dante and Petrarch, who were sufficient to set light to the genius of any poetical mind. But I am speaking of the

If they

modern clergy; books enough are certainly at their command. have not fire enough to enter into the fields of poetry, the fields of laborious erudition are open to them.

Davies.-Literature was my consolation in a remote obscurity: but till George Hardinge, with the ardour with which he embraced whatever he engaged in, undertook to revive my memory, literature had failed to bear me abroad on the wings of fame. Hardinge's father, Nicholas, was my intimate and early friend; but I need not speak of one, whose own merits were so well appreciated, and whose elegant classicality was rarely surpassed.

Daniel.-I hear that my name has been honoured and praised by the flattering notice of Wordsworth and Southey.

Warton. What they have said of you has reached me. It is worthy of their great taste, and your solid, instructive, and affecting genius. Davies. And Mr. Dyce has reprinted your poems, Sir Thomas, in his elegant Aldine edition.

Wyat.-My name is now forgotten in a country where it flourished for so many ages, and which no longer respects literature as it used to do; where the glorious male lines of Sackville, Sydney, Sandys, and Digges, have, with most of their property, departed, as mine has done. A country once so marked in history, to be now so obscure and dispirited! The fragments of my old castle remain, but they are fallen, fallen, fallen, and neglected.

Warton. I hope that I have not failed to do you justice in my History of English Poetry. I lament that I did not compose, at least, a sonnet on your venerable Castle of Allington, on the Medway. You know that nothing delighted my imagination like those feudal ruins. I had arrayed in my mind all the pictures, and all the memorials of castellated, chivalrous, and ecclesiastical plunder; I was a master of all the rich ornaments, and all the details of Gothic and Baronial Architecture. Never was any other mode of building so calculated to strike the fancy. The painted windows, the blaze of heraldry, the pennons, the shields, the spears, the swords, the tombs, the recumbent figures in their gorgeous coats of mail, what legends they told, with what feats they filled the busy imagination. Daniel.-I saw those days passing away before my eyes, but not gone. I saw Essex, and Sydney, and Cumberland, and Devonshire, go to their graves; and I saw a Monarch who shrunk from a drawn sword, which a woman had waved in glory. I saw Spenser perish in poverty, and

broken-hearted; and I saw Raleigh imprisoned, tried for his life, and attainted. The character of the poetry, and whole national literature, changed with the character of the court.

Warton. So it will too commonly happen. George III. had no feel. ing for poetry; and thus, poetry had little encouragement to blaze out while I lived. Little attention was paid to my Laureate Odes; and thus, I produced them lazily, unwillingly, and languidly.

Daniel.-Neglect did not oppress me; I wrote as vigorously as I could, to the last.

Wyat.-And naked vigour was the character of your Moral Epistles.

DIALOGUE II.

SIR PHILIP SYDNEY, EDWARD VERE EARL OF OXFORD, LORD FALKLAND, LORD BOLINBROKE, AND LORD CASTLEREAGH.

Sydney. Why do you look so fierce and insolent at me, as you did formerly on earth?

Oxford.-I cannot efface the remembrance how you braved me!

Sydney. The insult came from you. I respected high birth, and the dignity of the ancient peerage; and I respected your talents and accomplishments; but your treatment of me forced me to look into myself— my own character, and my own blood.

Oxford.-You threw your feathers in my face.

Sydney. The greatest man on earth should not have trod upon me. Oxford.-You were puffed up with flattery and glory.

Sydney. Any small reputation I might have gained, was won by labour and perils.

Oxford. And were these undergone by none but yourself?

Sydney. By many :-It was for the public to judge in what degrees ! Oxford.-The Queen took it into her capricious head to favour you. Sydney. I had served her Majesty with devotion, and my father and grandfather had served her family before me!

Oxford. For many centuries had my ancestors served royalty in the highest stations.

Sydney.-I am not calling in question the splendour of your lordship's venerable lineage. I was not attacking you; I was only defending myself.

Oxford.-I was not used to be braved; and I am conscious of a haughty temper.

Sydney. I cultivated mildness and courtesy with the sincerest endeavours; and the public gave me credit for not having been unsuccessful : but it was a part of the character instilled into me both by nature and education, firmly to resist all unmerited affronts. You alluded, with contempt, to my descent: I lived in an age when this could not be borne, if my blood was not obscure; and I could not but be conscious that it was the reverse. The Sydneys were an ancient and honourable race, though not noble like the Veres and my mother's blood was of the very highest. The Dudleys, the Beauchamps, and the Talbots, involved all the old peerage, besides intermarriages with the Royal House of Plantagenet.

Oxford.-I allowed of no comparison as fair, unless it was confined to the male line.

Falkland. This was an idle dispute, and an ungenerous insult on your Lordship's part. You ought to have known that greatness must be tried by mind and heart.

Oxford.-Lord Falkland, I know your amiable character, great accomplishments, devoted bravery, and lamented fate, and shall be unwilling to controvert any opinion you may express.

Falkland.-I was used to controversy, and would ask nothing to be admitted that did not stand upon reason.

Oxford. But there are opinions which must merely rest on senti

ment.

Falkland. Then Sydney was the spirit of glorious sentiment personified!

Oxford.-I know not by what magic this rival has enchanted all hearts and eyes.

Falkland.It is magic of which the force can only be derived from

truth.

Sydney. I would not have this earthly contest between us kept up here. It was soon forgotten by me, though it seems to have cankered in the mind of Lord Oxford. We ought to be spirits personified here.

Oxford.-Providence did not give me easy temper, nor gentle passions. My fortunes went wrong and embittered my feelings.

Falkland.-It was not all smooth with Sydney in his earlier days. His father, Sir Henry, knew the perplexity of state-affairs, and the painful embarrassments of pecuniary scantiness; and his mother's house had suffered attainder and death on the scaffold. Do not, therefore, attribute the sweetness of his temper to a prosperous fortune!

Sydney. I was naturally melancholy, and difficult in pleasing my own conscience; whatever may have gained the world's applause, resulted from an earnest desire to do my duty, and fearless self-devotion. I loved fame-perhaps too fondly;-but I sought fame only from good actions. Oxford. He who wishes to please all, must dilate many of his most virtuous energies.

Sydney. I knew firmness and indignation in their proper places. Bolinbroke.-You were not happy, after all?

Sydney. It was not intended that we should be happy ;-but I think I was often comparatively so.

Bolinbroke.-There are many false enthusiasms which lead us to sacrifice ourselves unnecessarily.

Falkland.-How are we to determine what is a false enthusiasm ; and what is an unnecessary sacrifice? No sacrifice in a good cause is unnecessary; nor the enthusiasm that prompts to it, false.

Bolinbroke. It is all a delusion; and he who plays his game with most art, does best.

Falkland.-These are ungenerous and ignoble opinions.

Bolinbroke." Qui vult decipi decipiatur ?"-We had a right to feed the folly of mankind for our own advantage. If they choose to be caught by bells and feathers, let them be caught! I enjoyed fame, because it gave me power; and power, because it enabled me to indulge my own appetites. The world is too ungrateful to make any return for benefits, which shall counterbalance sufferings and privations.

Falkland.-Yet you incurred these in the discharge of your political Affairs turned out contrary to

functions!

Bolinbroke.-I did not mean to do so. my calculations. We had made arrangements, by which I had expected to secure power and profit.

Falkland.-I am surprised and horrified to hear an open declaration of these doctrines.

Bolinbroke.-It was a part of my nature to break from all prejudices, and think for myself. I was, in the plain sense of the word, a freethinker. Sydney. So it seems!—You had a conscience which put no restraint upon itself. Yet, in point of mere worldly enjoyment, I cannot think that it could answer. If you was willing to deceive others, you must expect that others were willing to deceive you. Without trust you

never could be at your ease.

Bolinbroke.-One must trust to his own superior sagacity.

Sydney. This superior sagacity must in its very essence be confined to a few. What a system then for the grand happiness!

Bolinbroke.-We must not consider what ought to be, but what is! Sydney. On this theory you would make Falkland and me very foolish fellows.

Falkland.—An ingenious head, and witty imagination, not under the guidance of a pure conscience and sensitive heart, may flourish a little while on earth, but are deluding mischiefs which will not succeed here. You do not seem to have thrown off your human impurities in this new region of trial.

Sydney.-How short is the longest life compared with eternity! Why not then early end our earthly existence in glory, to commence our future being with better hopes? To live without fear, and die with prospects of brightness, cheer all around us, when we depart.

Oxford.-I found life wearisome, alliances useless, and friendships

frail.

Falkland.-These were the results of a haughty, ungenerous, and selfish spirit. The measure you gave out was returned to you.

Oxford. I cultivated the Muses, like Sydney; and I sought the honours of chivalry, like him.

Falkland.-Your fire was false, and it was detected; the glitter of your genius was artificial, and it was seen through.

Sydney.-Praise not me, Falkland ;-you died for a nobler cause than I did; you rushed into the field with a wish to die, in the midst of the veneration of the learned and the devotion of the good!

Castlereagh.-Love, honour, and respect in return for the anxious labours of the state; for weary days, and sleepless nights, these I would have had as my reward, and could not. I was covered with obloquy by a cruel and malignant party; and my worn-out spirits at last sunk into despondence under it!

Bolinbroke. I only of you all lived in peace and luxury, and died in the honours of a ripe old age. I was immortalized by Pope; and critics threw upon me the incense of their abundant praise. It was thought an honour to be admitted to my society; and wits encircled me, throwing a blaze around, which dazzled all eyes.

Castlereagh. The ways of Providence on earth were mysterious and dark; doubts and difficulties met me whithersoever I moved; the successes

of Napoleon puzzled my faith in the success of virtue and benevolence of Heaven; I saw daring disregard of principle everywhere applauded; and the purest intention misrepresented and covered with calumny. Neither my courtesy nor my courage availed me: if I was candid, I was thought deceitful; if I was bold, I was thought insolent, audacious, and unfeeling. Canning, by his rhetorical flourishes and gaudy poetical figures, endeavoured to depress me, and by his art of working on the imaginations of light minds, established a most unjust reputation for sagacity and solidity at my expense. I, at least, was consistent in my principles; he "Was everything by fits, and nothing long."

Bolinbroke.-You deny imagination: you would have found it avail you as a charm against all these causes of complaint. It was the spell by which I led the public in my chains-I mean a pliant and adroit imagination, not a melancholy one :-such as throws flowers over every thing, and places the tints so as to catch the prevailing humour of the moment. You talked too much like a man of business, and too little like an orator. The mind of man is formed to see things in partial points of view, and no advocate should attempt too wide and comprehen.. sive support or defence. You should have done as Canning did,

"Play round the head, but come not to the heart."

While you was listened to with impatience, Tierney, by his laconic jests, and colloquient raillery, won the ear of the house; yet what principle did he develope, what great point did he touch?

There

Sydney. The times are so changed from those in which I lived, that I do not easily enter into their habits, characteristics, or feelings. was then a respect for great names, and ancient glory, and the wisdom of state experience; rank carried its authority, and vulgar opinions were under awe. Now all principles are set afloat, and every one is a legislator and statesman, according to his own individual notions. If no data are granted—if no first principles are assumed, it is a Babel of tongues and wranglings. Then if all love of generous fame is taken to be empty pretence-if rank and honours are considered to be usurpations—if nothing is to be valued but material gratification-if the refinements of intellectual luxury-if the splendours of high society, lofty manners, and gallant modes of living, are to be treated as the mischievous follies of less philosophy and less enlightened ages, I must have formed my whole being anew, to fit me for entering on the arena of public contention.

Bolinbroke. But Europe was not in an undisturbed state, when you threw yourself into the heat of affairs.

Sydney. It was then, principally, a contest of governments;—not of the governed.

Bolinbroke.-Not so-puritanism was working and throwing out its sparks from its furnace shop of Geneva, with the spirit of Calvin at its head.

Sydney. At least it worked under ground; it did not shew its hydrahead in the open places.

Bolinbroke. I do not deny that the change has been nearly as great since my time. The election of statesmen, and even of representatives in parliament, from the ancient aristocracy, was a wise usage. It is absurd to suppose, that elevated notions are not contracted by the