the century-is Childe Harold. Among the best of his other works are- -The Dream, The Prisoner of Chillon, Mazeppa, The Bride of Abydos, Parisina, The Giaour, and The Siege of Corinth. His longest and most brilliant poem is Don Juan, but is unfit to read, on account of its coarseness. Beside these ne wrote Cain, Manfred, Marino Faliero, and several other dramas. These contain powerful passages, but are on the whole very defective on account of their want of variety in action and characters. (See "Life and Letters of Lord Byron," by Thomas Moore.)

EXTRACTS.
I.

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.

II.

The drying up a single tear has more

Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.

III.

All who joy would win,

Must share it; Happiness was born a twin.

IV.

The sky is changed! and such a change! O night,
And storm, and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,

Leaps the live thunder!—not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now has found a tongue,
And Jura answers through her misty shroud
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.

Childe Harold, C. III., St. 92.

SHELLEY. 1792-1822.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, the most poetical of all poets, was born in 1792, and was drowned in the Bay of Spezzia, Italy, in 1822. He is the author of several powerful dramas and of some long nar.. rative and descriptive poems, but he is essentially a lyric poet, and as such is unexcelled. The Skylark, The Sensitive Plant,

and The Cloud are embodiments of the very spirit of poesy, and shine with "the light that never was on sea or land."

I.

3.

6.

13.

21.

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine;

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

The Skylark (selected stanzas).

MOORE. 1779-1852.

Thomas Moore, the great Irish song writer, was born in Dublin in 1779, and died in 1852. His principal poetical works are his exquisite Oriental tale entitled Lalla Rookk, and his songs and hymns, many of which-such as The Last Rose of Summer, Those Evening Bells, Come ye Disconsolate, etc.—are known and sung wherever the English language is spoken.

EXTRACT.

Let Fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy.
They come in the night-time of sorrow and care,
And bring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled,
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled;
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will cling round it still.
Farewell! but whenever, etc.

KEATS. 1795-1821.

John Keats, a young poet of the highest promise, died in 1821, in his twenty-sixth year. His principal poems are Endymion, Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and Ode to a Nightingale. They are characterized by a profusion of beautiful imagery, and great wealth of classical learning and allusion.

Thomas Campbell was distinguished as a poet and a prosist. His principal poems are― -Pleasures of Hope, Gertrude of Wyoming, Lochiel's Warning, O'Connor's Child, and Hohenlinden. His principal prose work is his Lectures on Poetry.

EXTRACTS.
I.

The world was sad, the garden was a wild,
And man, the hermit, sighed till woman smiled.

II.

Pleasures of Hope.

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Pleasures of Hope.

WORDSWORTH. 1770-1850.

William Wordsworth, the principal of the "Lake Poets," was born in 1770, was educated at Cambridge, passed a tranquil and uneventful life, and died at Rydal Mount in 1850, the PoetLaureate of England, and loved and admired by all the world. In him poetry reached its completest emancipation from the artificiality of the age of Queen Anne. The love of nature expressed in the lines,

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,"

pervades all his works, and forms their leading characteristic. For this reason he may appropriately be called "the English Bryant," just as Bryant may be called "the American Wordsworth." He is now, by common consent, placed next to Milton on the roll of great poets.

Wordsworth's principal work is The Excursion, a long philosophical poem in blank verse; but most readers prefer his shorter poems, such as Ode on Immortality, Ode to Duty, Tintern Abbey Lucy, We are Seven, etc.

EXTRACTS.

I.

The child is father of the man,

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety. The Rainbow.

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER, "Barry Cornwall" (1790-1874), a fine lyric and dramatic poet, author of Dramatic Scenes, Mirandola (a tragedy), English Songs, Memoir of Charles Lamb, etc.

REV. WM. LISLE BOWLES (1762-1850), author of some exquisite sonnets, etc. JOHN KEBLE (1792-1866), a fine sacred poet, author of The Christian Year, Lyra Innocentium, several Tracts for the Times, etc.

Samuel ROGERS (1763-1855), author of Pleasures of Memory, and Italy. JOANNA BAILLIE (1762-1851), author of Plays on the Passions, Family Legend, and other dramas; also some religious and miscellaneous works.

MRS. FELICIA Hemans (1794-1835), author of Vespers of Palermo, a tragedy; and of Graves of the Household, Casabianca, Landing of the Pilgrims, and other popular poems.

LETITIA E. LANDON, afterwards Mrs. McLean (1802-1838), author of The Lost Pleiad, The Improvisatrice, Crescentius, and many other poems; also Romance and Reality, and other novels.

Rev. George Crabee (1754-1832), a vigorous and graphic narrative poet, author of The Library, The Village, The Parish Register, Sir Eustace Gray, etc. He is almost painfully realistic and truthful.

BISHOP HEBER (1783-1826), author of "From Greenland's icy mountains,” and other beautiful hymns.

ROBERT POLLOK (1799-1827), author of The Course of Time, once very popular.

THOMAS HOOD (1798-1845), a great wit and humorist, also author of some