To Bristol's fount I bore with trembling care Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm? Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine; Even from the grave thou shalt have power to charm. Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee; As firm in friendship, and as fond in love. Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die, ('Twas even to thee) yet the dread path once trod, Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high, And bids "the pure in heart behold their THOMAS WARTON. BORN 1728-DIED 1790. THE historian of English poetry was descended of a respectable Yorkshire family. Both his father and brothers were poets of some note. Warton entered Oxford at the age of sixteen, obtained a degree, and soon afterwards a fellowship, and for forty-seven years continued a distinguished member of the university. His lettered leisure was entirely devoted to poetry and antiquities; and his Observations on the Faery Queen and History of Poetry remain stupendous monuments of his enthusiasm, industry, and talents. The history, though incomplete at the death of the author, has formed the text-book of every succeeding writer on English literature. Warton was long professor of poetry-an office to which he had every claim. He was afterwards (in 1785) made Camden professor of history, and obtained the laureateship. Warton is represented by his biographer, Dr Mant, as fonder of a pot of ale, a pipe of tobacco, and what is called vulgar society, than beseems the dignity of the Muses, though probably not more so than was Prior, Swift, and Fielding, of one or all of those delights. It is related, that when he was wont to leave his classic cell to visit his brother Joseph, he contrived to become the confidant and playmate of half the schoolboys of Winchester, where Mr Joseph Warton was second master. When engaged with the boys in cooking clandestine banquets, he used to skulk like the other culprits when the step of the master was heard, and has been dragged from his lurking-place, mistaken for a great boy. He used to assist in the literary tasks of the Winchester boys, as well as in their culinary operations, taking care to throw as many blunders into their school-exercises as might deceive his learned brother. The poet of Richard and Prince Arthur, the historian of Chaucer and Spenser, of English romance and chivalry, must have been a very good-natured and delightful person. Warton decidedly possesses much of the Gothic imagination, martial spirit, and minstrel enthusiasm, which have since been so powerfully developed by later bards; and there. can be no doubt but that his learned and attractive volumes have tended, with the Reliques of Percy, to resuscitate the genuine spirit of English romantic poetry. He died in his college at the age of sixty-two. ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS' PAINTED YE brawny Prophets, that in robes so rich, That draw devotion's ready tear no more; Reynolds, 'tis thine, from the broad window's height, To add new lustre to religious light: Not of its pomp to strip this ancient shrine, THE HAMLET, AN ODE. THE hinds how blest, who ne'er beguiled When morning's twilight-tinctured beam To dip the scythe in fragrant dew; Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear, In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds, For them the moon with cloudless ray The meadows incense breathe at eve. That o'er a glimmering hearth they share : Their little sons, who spread the bloom Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest, Their humble porch with honey'd flowers |