And for their well performance soon disposes,
To this a garland interwove with roses,
To that a carved hook, or well-wrought scrip,
Gracing another with her cherry lip;

To one her garter, to another then

A handkerchief cast o'er and o'er again;
And none returneth empty, that hath spent
His pains to fill their rural merriment.*.

Among the gentry and at court the spirit of the same enjoyments took place, modified according to the taste or rank of the entertainers. The most universal amusement, agreeably to the general current in the veins and the common participation of flesh and blood (for rank knows no distinction of legs and knee-pans), was dancing. Contests of chivalry supplied the place of more rural gymnastics. But the most poetical and elaborate entertainment was the Mask. A certain flowery grace was sprinkled over all; and the finest spirits of the time thought they shewed both their manliness and wisdom, in knowing how to raise the pleasures of the season to their height. Sir Philip Sydney, the idea of whom has come down to us as a personification of all the refine. ment of that age, is fondly recollected by Spenser in this character.

His sports were faire, his joyance innocent,
Sweet without soure, and honey without gall:
And he himself seemed made for merriment,
Merrily masking both in bowre and hall.
There was no pleasure nor delightfull play,
When Astrophel soever was away.

For he could pipe, and daunce, and caroll sweet,
Amongst the shepheards in their shearing feast;
As somer's larke that with her song doth greet
The dawning day for th comming from the East.
And layes of love he also could compose:

Thrise happie she, whom he to praise did choose.
Astrophel, St. 5.

Individual homage to the month of May consisted in paying respect to it though alone, and in plucking flowers and flowering boughs to adorn apartments with.

This maiden, in a morn betime,

Went forth when May was in the prime

To get sweet sety wall,

The honey-suckle, the harlock,

The lily, and the lady-smock,

To deck her summer-hall.

Drayton's Pastorals, Eclog. 4.

* Britannia's Pastorals, by William Browne. Song the 4th. Browne, like his friend Wither, from whom we quoted a passage last week, wanted strength and the power of selection; though not to such an extent. He is however well worth reading by those who can expatiate over a pastoral subject, like a meadowy traet of country; finding out the beautiful spots; and gratified, if not much delighted, with the rest. His genius, which was by no means destitute of the social part of passion, seems to have been turned almost wholly to description by the beauties of his native county Devonshire.

But when morning pleasures are to be spoken of, the lovers of poetry who do not know Chaucer, are like those who do not know what it is to be up in the morning. He has left us two exquisite pictures of the solitary observance of May, in his Palamon and Arcite. They are the more curious inasmuch as the actor in one is a lady, and in the other a knight. How far they owe any of their beauty to his original, the Theseide of Boccaccio, we cannot say; for we never had the happiness of meeting with that very rare work. The Italians have so neglected it, that they have not only never given it a rifacimento or re-modelling, as in the instance of Boiardo's poem, but are almost as much unacquainted with it, we believe, as foreign countries. Chaucer thought it worth his while to be both acquainted with it, and to make others so; and we may venture to say, that we know of no Italian after Boccaccio's age who was so likely to understand him to the core, as his English admirer, Ariosto not excepted. Still, from what we have seen of Boccaccio's poetry, we can imagine the Theseide to have been too lax and long. If Chaucer's Palamon and Arcite be all that he thought proper to distil from it, it must have been greatly so; for it was a large epic. But at all events the essence is an exquisite one. The tree must have been a fine old enormity, from which such a honey could be drawn.

To begin, as in duty bound, with the lady. How she sparkles through the antiquity of the language, like a young beauty in an old hood!

Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day

Till it felle ones in a morowe of May,

That Emelie

But we will alter the spelling where we can, as in a former instance, merely to let the reader see what a notion is in his way, if he suffers the look of Chaucer's words to prevent his enjoying him.

Thus passeth year by year, and day by day,
Till it fell once, in a morrow of May,
That Emily, that fairer was to eeen
Than is the lily upon his stalk green,

And fresher than the May with flowers new,
(For with the rosy colour strove her hue;
I n'ot which was the finer of them two)
Ere it was day, as she was wont to do,
She was arisen and all ready dight,
For May will have no sluggardy a-night:
The season pricketh every gentle heart,
And maketh him out of his sleep to start,
And saith "Arise, and do thine observance."
This maketh Emily have remembrance
To do honour to May, and for to rise.
Yclothed was she, fresh for to devise;
Her yellow hair was braided in a tress,
Behind her back, a yardè* long I guess;
And in the garden, at the sun uprist,

She walketh up and down, where as her list;

These additional syllables are to be read slightly, like the e in French verse.

She gathereth flowers, party white and red,
To make a subtle garland for her head;
And as an angel, heavenly she sung.

The great tower, that was so thick and strong,
Which of the castle was the chief dongeon,
(Where as these knightès weren in prison,
Of which I toldè you, and tellen shall)
Was even joinant to the garden wall,

There as this Emily had her playing.

Bright was the sun, and clear that morwèuing

[Ilow finely, to our ears at least, the second line of the couplet always rises up from this full stop at the first!]

Bright was the sun, and clear that morwèning,
And Palamon, this woeful prisoner,

As was his wont, by leave of his jailèr,
Was risen, and roamed in a chamber on high,
In which he all the uoble city sigh*,

And eke the garden, full of branches green,
There as this fresh Emilia the sheent

Was in her walk, and roamed up and down.

Sir Walter Scott in his edition of Dryden says upon the passage before us, and Dryden's version of it, that "the modern must yield the palm to the ancient, in spite of the beauty of his versification." We quote from memory; but this is the substance of his words. For our parts, we quite agree with them, as to the consignment of the palm, but not as to the exception about the versification. With some allowance as to our present mode of accentuation, it appears to us to be touched with a finer sense of music even than Dryden's. It is more delicate, without any inferiority in strength; and still more various. At the same time, we do not quote Sir Walter for the purpose of differing with him. We would only shew the more fashionable part of our readers, what their favourite writer thinks of Chaucer; and we would also take another opportunity of contrasting some opinions of ours, exaggerated by party feeling and a young thoughtlessness, when Sir Walter wrote nothing but criticism and poetry, with our sense of his extraordinary merits as a novelist. But more of these in another place. Of politics also we say nothing here. There ought to be some places in the world of letters, where men's thoughts of each other, like the knights of old, may

In weeds of peace high triumphs hold.

But now to our other portrait. It is as sparkling with young manhood, as the former is with a gentler freshness. What a burst of radiant joy is in the second couplet; what a vital quickness in the comparison of the horse, "starting as the fire ;" and what a native and happy case in the conclusion!

The busy lark, the messenger gains,-all selfish and extrava-
Saleweth* in her song to over-do themselves, and to topple
And fiery Phoebus rise

That all the
And with

dott magnitude. The world, as it learns

And

to confound the means with the end, or at philosophically,) a really poor means with a really WiTest cricket-player on a green has as sufficient a quanlement as a fundholder or a partizan; and health, and and manliness to boot. Knowledge may go on; must do so, necessity; and should do so, for the ends we speak of: but Knowledge, so far from being incompatible with simplicity of pleasures, is the quickest to perceive its wealth. Chaucer would lie for hours, looking at the daisies. Scipio and Lælius could amuse themselves with making ducks and drakes on the water. Epaminondas, the greatest of all the active spirits of Greece, was a flute-player and dancer. Alfred the Great could act the whole part of a ministrel. Epicurus taught the riches of temperance and intellectual pleasure in a garden. The other philosophers of his country walked between. heaven and earth in the colloquial bowers of Academus; and "the wisest heart of Solomon," who found every thing vain because he was a king, has left us panegyrics on the Spring and." the voice of the turtle," because he was a poet, a lover, and a wise man.

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As thou shalt guide my wandering steeps to find
The fragrant greens I seek, my brows to bind."
His vows address'd, within the grove he stray'd.

How poor is this to Arcite's leaping from his courser "with a lusty heart." How inferior the common-place of the "fiery steed," which need not involve any actual notion in the writer's mind, to the courser 66 starting as the fire;"-how inferior the turning his face to "the rising day" and "raising his voice," to the singing "loud against the sunny sheen;" and lastly, the whole learned invocation and adjuration of May, about guiding his "wandering steps" and "so may thy tender blossoms" &c. to the call upon the fair fresh May, ending with that simple, quick-hearted line, in which he hopes he shall get "some green here;" a touch in the happiest taste of the Italian vivacity. Dryden's genius, for the most part, wanted faith in nature. It was too gross and sophisticate. There was as much difference between him and his original, as between a hot noon in perukes at St. James's, and one of Chaucer's lounges on the grass, of a May-morning.

All this worship of May is over now. There is no issuing forth, in glad companies to gather boughs; no adorning of houses with "the flowery spoil;" no songs, no dances, no village sports and coronations, no courtly poetries, no sense and acknowledgment of the quiet presence of nature, in grove or glaḍe.

O thou delicious spring, O ye new flowers,

O airs, O youngling bowers; fresh thickening grass,
And plains beneath heaven's face; O hills and mountains,
Vallies, and streams, and fountains; banks of green,

Myrtles, and palms serene, ivies, and bays;

And ye who warmed old lays, spirits o'the woods,
Echoes, and solitudes, and lakes of light;
O quivered virgins bright, Pans rustical,
Satyrs and Sylvans all, Dryads, and ye
That up the mountains be; and ye beneath
In meadow or flowery heath,-ye are alone.

This time two hundred years ago, our ancestors were all anticipating their May holidays. Bigotry came in, and frowned them away; then Debauchery, and identified all pleasure with the town; then Avarice, and we have ever since been mistaking the means for the end.

Fortunately it does not follow, that we shall continue to do so. Commerce, while it thinks it is only exchanging commodities, is help