Ye temples dim, where pious duty pays Sir Joshua was proud, as well he might be, of the Laureate's praises, but seems to have felt that the poet, after all, loved in his heart the old "wreathed Gothic window," where "hues romantic tinged the gorgeous pane," better than the "portraitures of attic art" he had been induced to celebrate. "I owe you great obligations for the sacrifice which ye have made, or pre tend to have made, to modern art; I say pretend, for though it is allow. ed that you have, like a true poet, feigned marvellously well, and have opposed the two different styles with the skill of a connoisseur, yet I may be allowed to entertain some doubts of the sincerity of your conversion." No wonder-for what can be finer, in its way, than this? "Ah, stay thy treacherous hand, forbear to trace Long have I loved to catch the simple chime, "But chief, enraptured have I loved to roam, By no Vitruvian symmetry subdued; To suit the genius of the mystic pile : Whilst as around the far retiring ile, And fretted shrines, with hoary trophies hung, Her dark illumination wide she flung, With new solemnity, the nooks profound, The caves of death, and the dim arches frowned. From bliss long felt unwillingly we part: Ah, spare the weakness of a lover's heart! It would not, we suspect, be easy for any one of our living poets to surpass what we have been copiously quoting; if you think so, you had better try. Strip Warton of his antiquarianism, we have heard it said, and seen it written, and you leave him bare. Strip a cathedral of its antiquity, and it becomes a barn. Play at the innocent game of strip-Peternaked till you are tired, but let Tom wear his weeds. There is much in what Joseph Warton relates of a visit he and his brother had with their father, in very early youth, to Windsor Castle. The old man-who had been Poetry-Professor in his day too, and ought to have been better-was angry with Tom for not having expressed any pleasure at the spectacle; "Thomas goes on, and takes no notice of any thing he has seen;" but Joe, who never forgot the remark, in maturer years observed, "I believe my brother was more struck with what he saw than either of us." And Dr Huntingford (late Bishop of Salisbury -a wise and good man) who communicated the anecdote-if anecdote it be-to Dr Mant (now Bishop of Down-a wise and good man too), says well, "there is good reason to think that the peculiar fondness for Castle Imagery, which Warton, on many occasions, strongly discovers, may be traced to this incident of his early days." Perhaps all the most pleasing characteristics of Warton's genius are, we think, exhibited in his Stanzas written at Vale-Royal Abbey in Cheshire-a monastery of Cistercian monks founded by King Edward the First, in consequence of a vow which he made when in danger of being shipwrecked, during his return from a crusade. It was first founded in Dernhall, in the same county, in the reign of Henry the Third; but Edward translated it to a place on the river Wever, not far distant, to which he then gave the name of the ValeRoyal. The versification-and the measure is a noble one— e-is equal to that of Davenant, Dryden, or Gray. WRITTEN AT VALE-ROYAL ABBEY IN CHESHIRE. "As evening slowly spreads his mantle hoar, "How sunk the scene, where cloister'd leisure mus'd! Where war-worn Edward paid his awful vow; And, lavish of magnificence, diffus'd His crowded spires o'er the broad mountain's brow! "The golden fans, that o'er the turrets strown, Quick glancing to the Sun, wild music made, Are reft, and every battlement o'ergrown With knotted thorns, and the tall sapling's shade. "The prickly thistle sheds its plumy crest, "Here hardy chieftains slept in proud repose, And through the lessening iles, in radiant rows, "There oxen browze, and there the sable yew "By the slow clock, in stately-measur'd chime, VOL. XLIV. NO. CCLXXVI, 2 N "High o'er the trackless heath at midnight seen, "Ev'n now, amid the wavering ivy-wreaths, (While kindred thoughts the pensive sounds inspire,) When the weak breeze in many a whisper breathes, I seem to listen to the chanting quire. "As o'er these shatter'd towers intent we muse, "For though the sorceress, Superstition blind, "Though the vain hours unsocial Sloth beguil'd, Yet hence, inthron'd in venerable state, "Her ponderous vase, with Gothic portraiture Emboss'd, no more with balmy moisture flows; Mid the mix'd shards o'erwhelm'd in dust obscure, No more, as erst, the golden goblet flows. "Sore beat by storms in Glory's arduous way, "Here ancient Art her dædal fancies play'd "Here Learning, guarded from a barbarous age, "Hither the solitary minstrel came An honour'd guest, while the grim evening sky "Thus sings the Muse, all pensive and alone; "Thus sings the Muse :-yet partial as she sings, "But much we pardon to th' ingenuous Muse; "From these deserted domes new glories rise; "Science, on ampler plume, a bolder flight a But by far the noblest of Warton's inspirations are his two odes—the Crusade and the Grave of King Arthur. "They have," quoth the author of Hohenlinden and Lochiel, " genuine air of martial and minstrel enthusiasm." And again," the spirit of Chivalry he may indeed be said to have revived in the poetry of modern times." Scott took a motto for the Minstrelsy of the Border from Warton-a most appropriate one— "The songs, to savage virtue dear, That won of yore the public ear; Ere polity, sedate and sage, Had quenched the fires of feudal rage." But Scott was indebted to Warton for far more than a motto-and has Tremble, watchmen, as ye spy Though to the gale thy banners swell, On to victory we go, A vaunting infidel the foe.' And Crete, with piny verdure crowned, "Blondel led the tuneful band, somewhere acknowledged the obliga- Cyprus, from her rocky mound, And swept the wire with glowing hand. tion-his genius was kindled by "the Crusade," and "the Grave of Arthur"-nor has he surpassed, if indeed he has equalled them in any of his most heroic strains. The composition is more perfect than that of any thing Scott ever wrote-the style more sustained and the spirit more accordant with the olden time. "The Crusade" is supposed to have been the Song composed by Richard and Blondel, and sung by that minstrel under the window of the Castle "Soon we kissed the sacred earth "Lo, the toilsome voyage past, Heaven's favoured hills appear at last!' Object of our holy vow, We tread the Tyrian valleys now. in which the King was imprisoned by O'er Engaddi's shrubs of balm THE CRUSADE. "Bound for holy Palestine, Waves the date empurpled palm : And quenched thy lamps that beamed so For thee, from Britain's distant coast, Aloft in his heroic hand, crown In vain thy gloomy castles frown: On giant wheels harsh thunders grate. Our cross with crimson wove and gold!'" "The Grave of King Arthur" is even a still nobler strain. King Henry the Second having undertaken an expedition into Ireland to suppress a rebellion raised by Roderic, King of Connaught, commonly called O'Connor Dunn, or the brown Monarch of Ireland, was entertained in his passage through Wales with the songs of the Welsh Bards. The subject of their poetry was King Arthur, whose history had been so disguised by fabulous inventions that the place of his burial was in general scarcely known or remembered. But in one of those Welsh poems sung before Henry, it was recited that King Arthur, after the Battle of Camlan in Cornwall, was interred at Glastonbury Abbey, before the high altar, yet without any external mark or memorial. Afterwards, Henry visited the Abbey, and commanded the spot, described by the bard, to be opened; when, digging near twenty feet deep, they found the body deposited under a large stone, in. scribed with Arthur's name. This is the groundwork of the ode; but it is told with some slight variations from the Chronicle of Glastonbury. The Castle of Cilgarran, where this discovery is supposed to have been made, now a ruin, stands on a rock descending to the river Teivi in Pembrokeshire, and was built by Roger Montgomery, who led the van of the warriors at Hastings. THE GRAVE OF KING ARTHUR. "Stately the feast, and high the cheer: High the screaming sea-mew soared; Armed with fate the mighty blow; |