With this passage one of his sonnets singularly agrees:

When I sit musing on the chequer'd past

(A term much darken'd with untimely woes),
My thoughts revert to her, for whom still flows
The tear, though half disown'd; and binding fast
Pride's stubborn cheat to my too yielding heart,
I say to her, she robb'd me of my rest,

When that was all my wealth. 'Tis true my breast
Received from her this wearying, lingering smart;
Yet, ah! I cannot bid her form depart;

Though wrong'd, I love her yet in anger love, For she was most unworthy. Then I prove Vindictive joy; and on my stern front gleams, Throned in dark clouds, inflexible ⚫

The native pride of my much injured heart.

Was the subject of this sonnet wholly imaginary, or was there some unfortunate story which, for prudent reasons, his biographer has suppressed? It is true that in his letters written at a much later period he speaks of marriage in a manner not to be reconciled with the idea that he was then suffering from recollections of that description; but he may in the interval of two years have partially recovered from his loss.

Kirke White was buried in the Church of All Saints, Cambridge, but no monument was erected to him until a liberal minded American, Mr. Francis Boot, of Boston, did himself the honour of placing a tablet to his memory, with a medallion, by Chantrey, on which is placed the following inscription, by Professor Smythe, one of his numerous friends:

"Warm'd with fond hope and learning's sacred flame,
To Granta's bowers the youthful poet came;
Unconquer'd powers the immortal mind display'd,
But worn with anxious thought, the frame decay'd:
Pale o'er his lamp, and in his cell retired,
The martyr student faded and expired.
Oh! genius, taste, and piety sincere,
Too early lost 'midst studies too severe !

Foremost to mourn, was generous Southey seen,
He told the tale, and show'd what White had been,
Nor told in vain. Far o'er the Atlantic wave
A wanderer came, and sought the poet's grave;
On yon low stone he saw his lonely name,
And raised this fond memorial to his famé."

CLIFTON GROVE.

DEDICATION.

To Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire, the following trifling effusions of a very youthful Muse are, by permission, dedicated by her Grace's much obliged and grateful Servant,

HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

Nottingham.

PREFACE.

THE following attempts in Verse are laid before the Public with extreme diffidence. The Author is very conscious that the juvenile efforts of a youth, who has not received the polish of Academical discipline, and who has been but sparingly blessed with opportunities for the prosecution of scholastic pursuits, must necessarily be defective. in the accuracy and finished elegance which mark the works of the man who has passed his life in the retirement of his study, furnishing his mind with images, and at the same time attaining the power of disposing those images to the best advantage.

The unpremeditated effusions of a Boy, from his thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary information, but in the more active business of life, must not be expected to exhibit any considerable portion of the correctness of a Virgil, or the vigorous compression of a Horace. Men are not, I believe, frequently known to bestow much labour on their amusements: and these

poems were, most of them, written merely to beguile a leisure hour, or to fill up the languid. intervals of studies of a severer nature.

Every one loves

Πας το οικείος έργον αγαπαω, his own work," says the Stagyrite; but it was no overweening affection of this kind which induced this publication. Had the author relied on his own judgment only, these Poems would not, in all probability, ever have seen the light.

Perhaps it may be asked of him, what are his motives for this publication? He answers—simply these: The facilitation, through its means, of those studies which, from his earliest infancy, have been the principal objects of his ambition; and the increase of the capacity to pursue those inclinations which may one day place him in an honourable station in the scale of society.

The principal Poem in this little collection (Clifton Grove) is, he fears, deficient in numbers and harmonious coherency of parts. It is, however, merely to be regarded as a description of a nocturnal ramble in that charming retreat, accompanied with such reflections as the scene naturally suggested. It was written twelve months ago, when the Author was in his sixteenth year: -The Miscellanies are some of them the productions of a very early age.-Of the Odes, that