SHELLEY.

To

NE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it,

One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,

And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,

But wilt thou accept not

The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not.

The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.

HE relations between society and a keenlysensitive and delicately-fibred man must always be peculiar. For Shelley's justification there is needed an active effort of moral sympathy, a fire of charity, a boldness of love which few of us dare to offer. His is one of those natures which require to be judged by a more lenient code than is written in the statute-book, and society cannot be blamed if it decline to recognise exceptional cases. SHIRLEY.

His youth, and resemblance to Southey, particularly in his voice, raised a pleasing impression, which was not altogether destroyed by his conversation, though it was vehement, arrogant and intolerant. H. CRABB ROBINSON.

Let who will denounce Shelley, I will not. I will not brand with Atheism the name of one whose life was one dream of enthusiastic, however impracticable, philanthropy. I will not say that a man who by his opposition to God, means opposition to a demon to whom the name of God is appended, is an enemy to God.

F. W. ROBERTSON.

Shelley was a being absolutely without selfish

ness.

TRELAWNEY.

EDMUND SPENSER.

WEET is the rose, but growes upon a brere;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharpe his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but pricketh nere,

Sweet is the firbloome, but his braunches

rough;

Sweet is the cyprese, but his rynd is tough ;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;

Sweet is the broome flowre, but yet sowre enough;

And sweet is moly, but his root is ill;

So, every sweet, with soure is tempred still,

That maketh it be coveted the more:

For easie things that may be got at will
Most sorts of men doe set but little store.
Why then should I accompt of little paine
That endlesse pleasure shall unto me gaine.

E trace in Spenser a mind constitutionally tender, delicate, and, in comparison with his three great compeers, I had almost said effeminate, and this, additionally saddened by the unjust persecution of Burleigh, and the severe calamities which overwhelmed his latter days. But nowhere in his strains do we find the least trace of irritability, and still less of quarrelsome or affected contempt of his censurers.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

The gentle Spenser, Fancy's pleasing son;
Who, like a copious river, poured his song
O'er all the mazes of enchanted ground.

THOMSON.

His is still the third name in the poetical literature of our country, nor has it been surpassed except by Dante, in any other. HALLAM.

In description he exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which characterise the very greatest poets, but we shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, or a finer flush in the colours of language than in this Rubens of English poetry. CAMPBELL.

The creations of Spenser have all of them a sunshine of their own, whose flush could only have been born of a soul that was all poetry.

G. G. CUNNINGHAM.

ROBERT BURNS.

HE gloomy night is gath'ring fast,
Loud roars the wild inconstant blast,
Yon murky is foul with rain,

I see it driving o'er the plain;
The autumn moans her rip'ning corn
By wintry weather's ravage torn.
Across her placid, azure sky,
She sees the scowling tempest fly;
Chill runs my blood to hear it rave,
I think upon the stormy wave,
Where many a danger I must dare,
Far from the bonnie banks of Ayr.
'Tis not the surging billows' roar,
'Tis not that fatal deadly shore;
Tho' death in every shape appear,
The wretched have no more to fear;
But round my heart the ties are bound,

That heart transpierced with many a wound,
These bleed afresh, those ties I tear
To leave the bonny banks of Ayr.
Farewell, old Coila's hills and dales,
Her heathy moors and winding vales;
The scenes where wretched fancy roves,
Pursuing past, unhappy loves!

Farewell! my friends! Farewell my foes!
My peace with these, my love with those-
The bursting tears my heart declare,
Farewell, ye bonnie banks of Ayr.