The busy lark, the messenger of day,
Saleweth in her song the morrow gray;
And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright,
That all the orient laugheth of the sight;
And with his stremès drieth in the greves t
The silver droppès hanging in the leaves;
And Arcite, that is in the court real
With Theseus the squier principal,
Is risen, and looketh on the merry day;
And for to do his observance to May,
Remembring on the point of his desire,
He on the courser, starting as the fire,
Is ridden to the fieldès him to play,
Out of the Court, were it a mile or tway:
And to the grove, of which that I you told,
By aventure his way he gan to hold,
To maken him a garland of the greves,
Were it of woodbind or of hawthorn leaves,
And loud he sung against the sunny sheen:
"O May, with all thy flowers and thy green,
Right welcome be thou, faire freshè May:
I hope that I some green here getten may."
And from his courser, with a lusty heart,
Into the grove full hastily he start,

And in a path he roamed up and down.

The versification of this is not so striking as the other, but Dryden again falls short in the freshness and feeling of the sentiment. His lines are beautiful; but they do not come home to us with so happy and cordial a face. Here they are. The word morning in the first line, as it is repeated in the second, we are bound to consider as a slip of the pen; perhaps for mounting.

The morning-lark, the messenger of day,
Saluteth in her song the morning gray;

And soon the sun arose with beams so bright,

That all the horizon laughed to see the joyous sight:

He with his tepid rays the rose renews,

And licks the drooping leaves, and dries the dews;
When Arcite left his bed, resolv'd to pay
Observance to the month of merry May:
Forth on his fiery steed betimes he rode,
That scarcely prints the turf on which he trod:
At ease he seemed, and prancing o'er the plains,
Turned only to the grove his horses' reins,
The grove I named before; and, lighted there,
A woodbine garland sought to crown his hair;
Then turned his face against the rising day,
And raised his voice to welcome in the May:

"For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear,
If not the first, the fairest of the year:

For thee the Graces lead the dancing Hours,

And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers:

When thy short reign is past, the feverish Sun

The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on.
So may thy tender blossoms fear no blight,

Nor goats with venom'd teeth thy tendrils bite,

* Saluteth.

+ Groves.

Royal.

THE INDICATOR.

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.

231

"with a lusty

How is this to Arcite's leaping from his courser poor 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 glade.

O dolce primavera, o fior novelli,
O aure o arboscelli o fresche erbette,
O piagge benedette, o colli o monti,
O valli o fiumi o fonti o verde rivi,
Palme lauri ed olive, edere e mirti;
O gloriosi spirti de gli boschi ;
O Eco, o antri foschi o chiare linfe,
O faretrate ninfe o agresti Pani,
O Satiri e Silvani, o Fauni e Driadi,
Naiadi ed Amadriadi, o Semidee,
Oreadi e Napee,—or siete sole.

Sannazzaro.

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

ing to diffuse knowledge. All other gains, all selfish and extravagant systems of acquisition,-tend to over-do themselves, and to topple down by their own undiffused magnitude. The world, as it learns other things, may learn not to confound the means with the end, or at least, (to speak more philosophically,) a really poor means with a really richer. The veriest cricket-player on a green has as sufficient a quantity of excitement as a fundholder or a partizan; and health, and spirits, and manliness to boot. Knowledge may go on; must do so, from 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.

Orders received by the Newsmen, by the Booksellers, and by the Publisher, Joseph Appleyard.

Printed by Joseph Appleyard, No. 19, Catherine-street, Strand.—Price 2d,

No. XXX.-WEDNESDAY, MAY 3d, 1820.

SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTH-DAY.

NEXT Friday, making the proper allowance of twelve days from the 23d of April, according to the change of the Style, is the birth-day of Shakspeare. Pleasant thoughts must be associated with him in every thing. If he is not to be born in April, he must be born in May. Nature will have her with him on her blithest holidays, like her favourite lover.

We

O thou divine human creature,-greater name than even divine poet or divine philosopher,-and yet thou wast all three,-a very spring and vernal abundance of all fair and noble things is to be found in thy productions! They are truly a second nature. walk in them, with whatever society we please; either with men, or fair women, or circling spirits, or with none but the whispering airs and leaves. Thou makest worlds of green trees and gentle natures for us, in thy forests of Arden, and thy courtly retirements of Navarre. Thou bringest us among the holiday lasses on the green sward; layest us to sleep among fairies in the bowers of midsummer; wakest us with the song of the lark and the silver-sweet voices of lovers; bringest more music to our ears, both from earth and from the planets; anon settest us upon enchanted islands, where it welcomes us again, from the touching of invisible instruments; and after all, restorest us to our still desired haven, the arms of humanity. Whether grieving us or making us glad, thou makest us kinder and happier. The tears which thou fetchest down are like the rains of April, softening the times that come after them. Thy smiles are those of the month of love, the more blessed and universal for the tears.

The birth-days of such men as Shakspeare ought to be kept, in common gratitude and affection, like those of relations whom we love. He has said, in a line full of him, that

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

How near does he become to us with his thousand touches! The lustre and utility of intellectual power is so increasing in the eyes of the world, that we do not despair of seeing the time when his birthday will be a subject of public rejoicing; when the regular feast will be served up in tavern and dwelling-house, the bust crowned with laurel, and the theatres sparkle with illuminations. The town is lucky enough once more to have a manager who is an enthusiast. If Mr. Elliston would light up the front of his theatre next Friday with the name of Shakspeare, we would warrant him a call from the pit, and whole shouts of acknowledgment.

In the mean time, it is in the power of every admirer of Shakspeare to honour the day privately. Rich or poor, busy or at leisure, all may do it. The busiest finds time to eat his dinner, and may pitch one considerate glass of wine down his throat. The poorest may call him to mind, and drink his memory in honest water. We had mechanically written health, as if he were alive. So he is in spirit ;-and the spirit of such a writer is so constantly with us, that it would be a good thing, a judicious extravagance, a contemplative piece of jollity, to drink his health instead of his memory. But this, we fear, should be an impulse. We must content ourselves with having felt it here, and drinking it in imagination. To act upon it, as a proposal of the day before yesterday, might be too much like getting up an extempore gesture, or practising an unspeakable satisfaction.

An outline however may be drawn of the manner, in which such a birth-day might be spent. The tone and colouring would be filled up, of course, according to the taste of the parties. If any of our readers then have leisure as well as inclination to devote a day to the memory of Shakspeare, we would advise them, in the first place, to walk out, whether alone or in company, and enjoy during the morning as much as possible of those beauties of nature, of which he has left us such exquisite pictures. They would take a volume of him in their hands, the most suitable to the occasion; not to hold themselves bound to sit down and read it, nor even to refer to it, if the original work of nature should occupy them too much; but to read it, if they read any thing; and to feel that Shakspeare was with them substantially as well as spiritually-that they had him with them under their arm. There is another thought connected with his presence, which may render the Londoner's walk the more interesting. Shakspeare had neither the vanity, which induces a man to be disgusted with what every body can enjoy; nor on the other hand the involuntary self-degradation, which renders us incapable of enjoying what is abased by our own familiarity of acquaintanceship. About the metropolis therefore, there is perhaps not a single rural spot, any more than about Stratford-uponAvon, which he has not himself enjoyed. The south side of London was the one nearest his theatre. Hyde Park was then, as it is now, one of the fashionable promenades. Richmond also was in high pride of estimation. At Greenwich Elizabeth held her court, and walked abroad amid the gallant service of the Sydneys and Raleighs. And Hampstead and Highgate, with the country about them, were as they