deepest sympathy, and Mr. Jerry Deneen this poor orphan. I remain with due a reprimand on his dilatoriness?

respect Your humble servant WILLIAM

SWriten Thursday 18 hundred an 76. Sir my husband was very bad an died My noble spirit could not resist so this tiome Sir I ave ben sodly put aboute charming a compliment, and I helped to by wan Jerry Deneen as behaved shamful obtain the license for another kind of to my poor husband Sir this was ow it “spirit,” thereby making glad the heart of hapned Tim thats my husband Sir was the poor orphan. mioghty il an as near dyin as iver you

Cee Here is another letter in wbich my Tim says i an whoo wud ye lioke to mak friend Dan says "he'd walk from here to

i yer cofin sure thin Mary says he theirs Cork” for me, and a very long walk it kno wan as i wud lioke to mak it bether would be. thin Jerry Deneen only he is mioghty bé.

SIR hinde hande in his conthracts arrah Tim says I Sir mak yer minde aisey bout that

Ye ought for to concider an alow that for he is shure an sartin to finis the loikes my Pashion of Jalousy could not afford o that in dacent tiome now Sir my pooremanes I could to pay my rint by givin

me but to spake prisumptious I used all husband the lord ave Marcy on his sowl had to waite for an other nites wake for my bill to Bank and met it Honorable for that Jerry Deneen bad cess to him niver

it was in my Hearth an minde if ye wanted

me to walk from here to Cork I wud not finised the dacent mans cofin in tiome refus I have no more news but hoping now Sir I lave the mater in yer honers that £ may be worth £100 an wishio bandes hopin as you will punis that vilan as want to charg‘me fiften shillin an he to full servant DANIEL M

prosperity to ye an yer Famely your faith. kep my poor husband watin 2 blesbet nites for his cofin.

Its two empirtnant intirely for me to Yours to comande MARY C

ixpect a letter from ye Sir kno more at

the prisent. honored an kinde Sir may I thrust u to punis that divil Deneen.

The next and last letter I will give you A somewhat similar, and I might add to read is from a tenant who buys turkeys amusing, instance happened not long ago

for a friend of mine. when a tenant's wife died. It was on a

ent ones seem to have been damaging the Saturday night, I remember, and I did not

farmer's crops. hear of her death until Sunday. I then

SIPTEMBER Friday sent to my carpenter, and desired him to

1884. make a coffin for the remains. Next I hope this will find you in as gud healt morning, on looking out of the window I as it laves me at the presint thank God saw her sons carrying the coffin from the Sind for the turkies at onst they ave the workshop. I opened the window, and oats that flat I have boght ye 16 couple called to them to wait till I satisfied my- an a halve Captin at 4 shillins an nine self that it was a good one. On desiring pinse for too į gav wan shillin arnest* them to lift off the cover, what was my minde that sind me a payhin I dont want astonishment to see the coffin filled with a black paybin nor naither a white I wants turnips ! Passing by the turnip-pit, the a spheckled wan sind for them turkies an bearers could not resist taking a few, for welcome at wanst shurely i remain Sir

as they explained “it felt so mioghty | Yours thruly Tom McGempty!"

them turkies ar small an fat an hav

grate legs. Can any one wonder if I modestly blushed on perusing the following master- I bave, I think, given sufficient reason piece of penmanship?

to show that wit and honesty may still be HOND. SIR

found in dear old Ireland, and trust the I most respectfully beg to remind you

perusal of these simple letters will afford that in a conversation with you you kindly amusement - though not in derision

the reader. promised to vote for a License for my sister Hoping your Honr will act with

* "Earnest” is money advanced when a bargain is that noble spirit for which you are now so made, to insure there being no disappointment in the characteristic in obtaining a License for fulfilment of it.

each year

The pres.

to

Fifth Series, Volume XLIX.

}

No. 2124.–March 7, 1885.

| From Beginning,

Vol. OLXIV,

• 579

By

597

CONTENTS.
I. SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET,

Edinburgh Review,
II. A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.
Mrs. Oliphant. Part VI.,

Chambers' Journal,
III. ON SOME OF SHAKESPEARE'S FEMALE

CHARACTERS: BEATRICE. By Helena Fau-
cit Martin,

Blackwood's Magazine,
IV. A MILLIONAIRE's Cousin. Part II., Macmillan's Magazine,
V. ROBBING THE BANK OF ENGLAND,

Chambers' Journal, VI. GEORGE Eliot's HUMOR,

Spectator,

.

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Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

I.

II.

wears

TETHERED.

But learn that Pan in earth's primordial age

Sat down in sheer delight to fashion me,

Tuning my stops by forest, mount, and lea, An open lake with room for all the sky : Northward wide slopes and then the tall To nature's finest notes with fingers sage. blue chain;

Pan dead, the Tuscan took me and fulfilled To east the depths of pines, and, closer by,

With love's immortal music. Shakespeare Willows that net the ripples, warping oaks,

then Cedars, dense elms that hold the wood-doves'

His Titan spirit launched into my mould. cry ;

Anon to Milton's thunder-song I thrilled, And stretching to the sun, a boundless plain.

Pulsed with Keats' passionate heart, and

unto men
On the free lake, on the free river,
The swans drift by at rest,

Witnessed with Wordsworth from the
Breast the wind's waves in strong en-

solemn wold, deavor,

Spectator.

ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES.
Break the clear calm with sinooth slow

strokes :
To north, to south, to east, to west,
Swans on lake and river.

A WINTER PICTURE.
A careful garden where the ivy spreads,

The winter rime is on the apple-trees; Lending a rustic touch to shadowing walls; The mulberries are bare; no longer shows And, in the centre space, the patterned beds,

The graceful pear her wealth of burnished

fruit; Catching the noonday sun, bloom red and gold;

Stripped is the slender plum; the orchard And pollard limes send sweetness o'er our heads;

A look of barren sadness; garnered in And there's green lawn, save where their Are all its purple, red, and golden fruits, shadow falls.

And sterile shall it show till blossom-tiine.

Thus Nature, after labor, takes her rest, Lilacs blow first, then carpet posies, Gaining fresh vigor for her teeming-time,

Crisp asters find their turn: By husbanding her strength; and so the fields, Proof of each season it encloses,

Whereon in autumn glowed the ruddy corn, (Even though sparrows are too bold)

Lie fallow for a season. 'Tis the time
The garden with the fountain urn, Of universal pause from that hard toil
With the shapely posies.

That is the lot of all our husbandmen ;
Even the flowers are withered.

And the birds Swans on the river, on the lake's blue deep: As silent are as is the scene around

In the walled garden with the limes arow Beneath its snowy shroud; no whistle wakes A swan sits in a corner, half asleep,

The echoes of the glade, no melody A swan that wears a chain upon his limb, Comes from the woodland spray; a deathlike Measured the length that he may come and go;

calm,
And he can reach the urn, and has his keep. Serene and still, profound and beautiful,

Lies over Nature, as she tranquil sleeps.
On the free lake, on the free river,

Chambers' Journal.
The swans go who knows where :
Guest of the garden, guest forever,
Room in the fountain's bath for him,
The chain's full length to take the

air,
Swan enchained forever.

A QUEST FOR A HEART.

I LOOKED forth from my inmost self, One showed a life's long secret, pitying And searched the world throughout; thus,

“: My life,” I cried, “for one true heart, “Poor swan ! 'tis like a tethered soul of

To swear by without doubt!”
Good Words.
AUGUSTA WEBSTER,

I looked again, and looked in vain,

No heart appealed to mine;
“Seek not outside," a voice replied,

“For hearts to answer thine.”

III.

us."

THE SONNET. MISCALl me not the poet's prison-cage,

Albeit of golden woof, his laurel-tree

To pattern pruned, Andromeda by the sea Fettered for death, or Phæbus'starveling page !

I looked within, and next mine own,

So close that both seemed one,
I found the heart - and there it lies;

'Tis yours — my search was done.
Temple Bar.

N. T. B.

SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET.

art.

From The Edinburgh Review. These poets, however, came later than

Spenser, and were not a little indebted to It often bappens that soine eminent bim, while yet they were in some respects, characteristic of a great poet has almost unlike him. Some of them selected escaped observation owing to the degree themes so abstract and metaphysical as to in which other characteristics, not higher be alınost beyond the limits of true poetic but more attractive to the many, have also The difficulty was itself an attraction belonged to binn. Spenser is an instance to them, and their ambition was more to of this. If it were asked what chiefly instruct than to delight. Spenser loved constitutes the merit of his poetry, the philosophy as well as they, but was too answer would commonly be, its descriptive truly a poet to allow of his following her power, or its chivalrous sentiment, or its when she strayed into “a barren and dry exquisite sense of beauty; yet the quality land,” or of his adopting the didactic which he himself desiderated most for his method when he illustrated philosophic chief work was one not often found in themes. Truth and beauty are things union with these, viz., sound and true phil. correlative; and very profound truths can osophic thought. This is the characteris. be elucidated in verse without the aid of tic which we propose to illustrate at pres such technical reasoning processes as ent. It was

the characteristic which those with which Dryden conducted his chiefly won for him the praise of Shake argument in “The Hind and Panther," speare:

and Pope in his essays. Spenser's Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such

imagination never forsook the region of As, passing all conceit, needs no defence;

the sympathies; but it had the special and it was doubtless the merit to which he gift of drawing within their charmed circle owed the influence which Milton acknowl- themes which for another poet must have edged that Spenser's poetry had exercised ever remained outside it, and of suffusing over his own. There is more of philos. them at once with the glow of passion ophy in one book of "The Faery Queen" and with the white light of high intelli

” than in all the cantos of his Italian modo gence. It is true that he dealt much in els. Jo Italy the thinkers were generally allegory; but though allegory is commonly astute politicians or recluse theologians; a cold thing — always, indeed, if it be and her later poets, excepting of course mere allegory — yet whenever Spenser's Tasso, cared more to amuse a brilliant genius is true to itself, bis allegory catches court with song and light tale than to fol. fire, and raises to the heights of song low the steps of Dante along the summits themes which would otherwise bave deof serious song. England, on the other scended to the level of ordinary prose. hand, uniting both the practical and the Had Spenser's poetry not included this meditative mind with the imagioative in- philosophic vein, it would not have been stincts of southern lands, had thereby in sympathy with a time which produced strengthened both that miod and those in a Bacon, whose prose is often the noblest stincts, and thus occupied a position poetry, as well as a Sidney, whose life was neither above nor beneath the region of a poem. At the Merchant Taylors' Gramthoughtful poetry. In the latter part of mar School, Bishop Andrews and, as is the sixteenth and earlier part of the sev. believed, Richard Hooker, were among enteenth century, she possessed a consid- his companions; and when he entered erable number of poets who selected, Cambridge, Pembroke Hall was at least apparently without offence, very grave as much occupied with theological and themes for their poetry. It will suffice to metaphysical discussion as with classical name such writers as Samuel Daniel, literature. John Davies, George Herbert, Dr. Donne, We may go further. It was in a large Giles Fletcher, Habington, and, not much measure the strength of his human sym. later, Dr. Henry More, the Platonist. pathies, which at once forced Spenser to • The Works of Edmund Spenser. Edited by the include philosophy among the subjects of

London : 1933. his poetry, and prevented trat philosophy

Rev. Dr. GROSART.

In 8 vols.

a

man.

from becoming unfit for poetry. As he great things” for two centuries after was eminently a poet of the humanities, Spenser had denounced the approaching so his philosophy was a philosophy of the imposture. That imposture is the one, humanities; he could no more have tak- now but too well known, wbich, in the en up a physiological theme for a poem, name of justice, substitutes for it the like Phineas Fletcher's “Purple Island,” fiction of a universal equality in the interthan a geographical one, like Drayton's ests of which all human society hitherto “Polyolbion.” The philosophy which in. knowo is to be levelled down and remod. terested him was that which “comes elled. Artegal, Spenser's emblem of jus. home to the business and bosoms of men.” tice, rides forth on his mission accompa. It was philosophy allied to life — philos. nied by his squire Talus, the iron man, ophy moral, social, and political. Such with the iron fail. On the seaside they philosophy is latent in all great poetry, descry“many nations” gathered 10though it is in some ages only that it be- gether: comes patent. It is with bis political and There they beheld a mighty gyant stand social philosophy that we shall begin, pro- Upon a rocke, and holding forth on hie ceeding afterwards to bis philosophy of An huge great paire of ballaunce in his hand,

With which he boasted in his surquedrie* We know from Spenser's letter to Sir

That all the world he would weigh equallie, Walter Raleigh that to embody a great

If aught he had the same to counterpoize;

For want whereof he weighed vanity, scheme of philosophy was the end which

And filled his ballaunce full of idle toys; he proposed to himself in writing “The

And was admired much of fools, women, and Faery Queen.” That poem was to con.

boys. sist of twelve books; and the hero of each

He sayd that he would all the earth uptake was to impersonate one of the twelve

And all the sea, divided each from either; moral virtues enumerated by Aristotle.

So would he of the fire one ballaunce make, This poem he proposed to follow up by a

And of the ayre without or wind or weather : second, the hero of which was to have

Then would he ballaunce heaven and hell been King Arthur after he had acceded to together, the throne, and which was to have illus- And all that did within them all containe ; trated the political virtues. We learn Of all whose weight he would not misse a from Todd's “ Life of Spenser" that at a

fether; party of friends held near Dublin, in the And looke what surplus did of each remaine, house of Ludowick Bryskett, the poet

He would to his own part restore the same gave the same account of his poem, then

againe. unpublished, but of which a considerable Therefore the vulgar did about him flocke, part had been written. Bryskett, on that And cluster thicke unto his leasings vaine, occasion, spoke of him as “not only per- Like foolish flies about a hony-crocke fect in the Greek tongue, but also very In hope by him great benefit to gain.t well read in philosophy, both moral and The Knight of Justice here breaks in, and patural.”

affirms that the giant ought before restorUnhappily, only half of the earlier ro. ing everything to its original condition, mance was written, or at least has reached to ascertain exactly "what was the poyse us, and no part of the second; but much of every part of yore.” The giant knows which belongs to the subject of the sec. that the best mode to meet an unanswer. ond poem may be found in fragments scat. able reply is by reiteration : tered over the six books of “ The Faery

Therefore I will throw downe these moun. Queen.” One of these political fragments tains hie, vindicates the old claim of poets to be

And make them levell with the lowly plaine, prophets; for the great revolutionary dog.

These towring rocks which reach unto the ma expounded in it is one which, though skie, its earlier mutterings may have been heard I will thrust down into the deepest maine, at the time of the German Anabaptists, Pride. did not “open its mouth” and “speak † Faery Queen, Book V., canto ii., stanza 30.