Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes;
For in the flaxen lilies' shade
It like a bank of lilies laid;
Upon the roses it would feed,
Until its lips even seemed to bleed;
And then to me 't would boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip.
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill,

And its pure virgin limbs to fold

In whitest sheets of lilies cold.

Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within.

*

Nothing can exceed the tender grace, the delicate prettiness of this little poem. There is a trippingness in the measure, now stopping short, now bounding on, which could not have been exceeded by the playful motions of the poor fawn itself. We must forgive his want of gallantry. It must have been all pretence. No true woman-hater could so have embodied a feeling peculiar to the sex, the innocent love of a young girl for her innocent pet.

I must find room for a few stanzas of Marvell's Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's return from Ireland. Fine as the praise of Cromwell is, it yields in grandeur and beauty to the tribute paid by the Roundhead poet to the demeanour of the King upon the scaffold by far the noblest of the many panegyrics upon the martyred King..

And if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due,

Who from his private gardens, where
He lived reservèd and austere,

(As if his highest plot

To plant the bergamot),

Could by industrious valour climb
To win the greatest work of Time,
And cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould!

Though justice against fate complain
And plead the ancient rights in vain,
But those do hold or break
As men are strong or weak.

Nature that hateth emptiness

Allows of penetration less.

And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.

What field of all the civil war

Where his were not the deepest scar? And Hampden shows what part He had of wiser art:

Where, twining civil fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope,

That Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrooke's narrow case;

That thence the royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn.

While round the armed bands
Did clap their bloody hands,

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye

The axe's edge did try;

Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right;

But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.

And he who wrote this was Cromwell's Latin Secretary and Cromwell's other Latin Secretary was Milton! There have been many praises of the Lord Protector written latterly, but these two facts seem to me worth them all.

XIX.

SCOTTISH POETS.

WILLIAM MOTHERWELL.

Two of the ballads of William Motherwell are amongst the most beautiful in the Scottish dialect, so full of lyrical beauty; and yet the one which is the most touching is scarcely known, except to a few lovers of poetry. "Jeanie Morrison," indeed, has an extensive popularity in Scotland, and yet even that charming song is comparatively little known in this country.

Burns is the only poet with whom, for tenderness and pathos, Motherwell can be compared. The elder bard has written much more largely, is more various, more fiery, more abundant; but I doubt if there be in the whole of his collection anything so exquisitely finished, so free from a line too many, or a word out of place, as the two great ballads of Motherwell. And let young writers observe that this finish was the result, not of a curious felicity, but of the nicest elaboration. By touching and retouching, during many years, did "Jeanie Morrison" attain her perfection, and yet how campletely has art concealed art! How entirely does that charming song appear like an irrepressible gush of feeling that would find

vent. In "My heid is like to rend, Willie," the appearance of spontaneity is still more striking, as the passion is more intense-intense, indeed, almost to painfulness.

Like Burns, Motherwell died before he attained his fortieth year, and like him, too, although a partisan of far different opinions, he was ardently engaged in political discussion as the Editor of a Tory newspaper, in Glasgow. He was even the Secretary of an Institution that sounds strangely in English ears-a Scotch Orange Lodge. I notice these facts only to observe, that they are already almost forgotten. The elements of bitterness and hatred, in which the politician revels, live through their little day, then pass away for ever: while the deep and pure feelings of a true poet are imperishable.

As with "Percy's Reliques," my own copy of Motherwell has to me an interest besides that of its high literary merits. If I would explain the source of that interest, I must even tell the story, luckily a very short one.

Three years ago, a friend to whom I owe a thousand obligations of all sorts and kinds, posted London over to procure this volume. Now my friend is a man of book-shops and book-stalls, but only one copy could he meet with, and that was neither Scotch, nor English, but American, from the great Boston publishers, Ticknor and Company. The book became immediately a favourite, and was laid on the table a phrase which in my little drawing-room has a very different sense from that which it bears in the House of Commons.