We close these extracts with Dryden's excellent

V.-Advice to Young Writers.

"Observe the language well in all you write,
And swerve not from it in your loftiest flight.
The smoothest verse and the exactest sense
Displease us, if ill English give offence:

A barbarous phrase no reader can approve;
Nor bombast, noise, nor affectation love.

In short, without pure language, what you write
Can never yield us profit or delight.

Take time for thinking, never work in haste;
And value not yourself for writing fast:
Keep to your subject close in all you say,
Nor for a sounding sentence ever stray;
The public censure for your writings fear,
And to yourself be critic most severe;
Polish, repolish, every color lay,

And sometimes add, but oftener take away."

II. Describe the several similes in this extract. How many are

there?

III. Verse 1.--Who was the Philip here referred to ?--Meaning of "desert in arms"? Thais: a celebrated Athenian beauty who accompanied Alexander in his expedition.--How should the three lines of "repetition" be read? (See p. 26.)

V. 4.--Meaning of "assumes the god," and "affects to nod"? (Assumes to act like Jupiter, whose will kings and gods obey, and at whose nod Olympus shakes to its foundations.)

V. 6.--Allusions to the Furies, "the snakes that they rear," etc. (In Grecian mythology the Furies were three goddesses, who brandished each a torch in one hand and a scourge of snakes in the other.)

"The king seized a flambeau," etc. Thais is said to have instigated Alexander, on this occasion, to set fire to the palace, intending to burn the entire city. The poet compares her to Helen, whose fatal beauty caused the downfall of Troy 852 years before.

CHAPTER VIII.-MISCELLANEOUS.

I.-The Conqueror.

1. I remember Falaise, and the songs that we sung
When eventide gathered the old and the young,
And over the vineyards the golden moon hung
In the years that are fled.

2. My fleet on the waters again I behold,
The gonfalons waving, the pennons of gold,
The three-bannered lions of Normandy old,

As in years that are fled.

3. I pointed to England, and proudly behind,
The wings of a thousand ships rose on the wind,
And the sun, sinking low, on the serried shields shined,
In the years that are fled.

4. Pevensey! The shout from a thousand ships rung; To Hastings we marched, the green hill-sides among, And there the great war-song of Roland we sung,

In the years that are fled.

5. And calm was the evening, the moon it was round,
The dead and the dying lay thick on the ground,
As I stood by the side of young Harold discrowned,
In the years that are fled.

6. My army from slumber awakened each day,

The yeomen to harry, the foemen to slay:

They fought by the Humber, they fought by the Tay,
In the years that are fled.

7. Fécamp glows before me,-the feasts debonair,
The troubadours' dance in the torch-lighted air,
The full wine that flowed 'neath the coronals there,
In the years that are fled.

8. The scutcheon of conqueror shines on the wall;
My triumphs are arrassed in yonder bright hall,
And chronicled there where the tapestries fall
Are the years that are fled.

9. My red wars are ending; o'er wrinkles of care
Time's coronet silver encircles my hair;
Alas, and alas, for the son of Robert,"

And the years that are fled!

10. Hark! a young mother sings on the terrace below, To the babe on her breast, an old rune of Bayeux:' My crown would I give its sweet slumbers to know, And to lie in its stead!

Hezekiah Butterworth.

The foregoing poem, gracefully written, is full of "allusions"; but, instead of explaining them, we leave them to stimulate the pupil— and perhaps the teacher also--to a little historical research.

Who was the "Conqueror," the subject of the poem ?

Verse 1.—Where was Falaise, the birthplace of "The Conqueror"? Where were "the vineyards" here referred to?

V. 2.—On what "waters"?-Meaning of "gonfalons" and " nons"?-The "three-bannered lions" ?-Where was Normandy?

pen

V. 4. Where was Pevensey, and why referred to here?-Where was Hastings?-Who was Roland ?—What about that "war-song"? -Who sung it on the occasion here referred to?

V. 5.-Who was Harold?

V. 6.-Meaning of "to harry"?-What were the Humber and the Tay?

V. 7.-Where was Fécamp?-Meaning of "feasts debonair" ?— Who were "the troubadours" ?-Meaning of "'neath the coronals"?

V. 8-Meaning of "arrassed"?-Whose triumphs were "arrassed," and in what hall?-What were the tapestries here referred to, and who is supposed to have worked them?

V. 9.—Meaning of "Time's coronet silver"?-Who is meant by "the son of Robert"?

V. 10-What is meant by "rune," as here used?-Where and what was Bayeux ?

a

Here the French pronunciation, Ro-bare', must be given, to rhyme with care.-6 .-- Pronounced Bay-ō', or, nearly, Bă-yoo'.

II.-Historic Old England.

1.

Land of the rare old chronicle, the legend, and the lay, Where deeds of fancy's dreams are truths of all thine ancient day;

Land where the holly-bough is green around the Druid's pile,

And greener yet the histories that wreathe his rugged isle; Land of old story-like thine oak, the aged, but the strong, And wound with antique mistletoe, and ivy-wreaths of song, Old isle and glorious—I have heard thy fame across the sea, And know my fathers' homes are thine, my fathers rest with thee!

2.

And I have wooed thy poet-tide from fountain-head along, From warbled gush to torrent roar, and cataract of song. And thou art no strange land to me, from Cumberland to Kent,

With hills and vales of household name, and woods of wild event;

For tales of Guy and Robin Hood my childhood ne'er

would tire,

And Alfred's poet-story roused my boyhood to the lyre.

3.

Fair isle! thy Dove's" wild dale along with Walton have I

roved,

And London, too, with all the heart of burly Johnson, loved.

Chameleon-like, my soul has ta'en its every hue from thine, From Eastcheap's epidemic laugh to Avon's gloom divine.

a

Dove, a river of England, in the northwest part of Derbyshire. At " Dove Dale" it flows through a gorge of great beauty.

All thanks to pencil and to page of graver's mimic art, That England's panorama gave to picture up my heart: That round my spirit's eye hath built thine old cathedral piles,

And flung the checkered window-light adown their trophied aisles.

I know thine abbey, Westminster, as sea-birds know their nest,

And flies my homesick soul to thee, when it would find a

rest;

Where princes and old bishops sleep, with sceptre and with crook,

And mighty spirits haunt around each Gothic shrine and nook.

I feel the sacramental hue of choir and chapel there,

And pictured panes that chasten down the day's unholy

glare;

And dear it is, on cold gray stone, to see the sunbeams crawl,

In long-drawn lines of colored light that streak the bannered wall.-Arthur Cleveland Coxe.

CHAPTER IX.-JOSEPH ADDISON.-1672-1717.

I.-Biographical.

1. Joseph Addison, an English essayist, dramatist, and poct, was born in 1672, during the reign of Charles the Second. In his early school days he made the acquaintance of Richard Steele, who afterward became a distinguished writer, and Addison's literary associate.

2. At the age of fifteen, Addison entered Queen's College, Oxford, where he applied himself with such diligence to