than wild hills that aspire to be mountains, covered with vast, unfrequented woods, and here and there affording a peep between their summits at the distant ocean. Though delightful in the extreme to those who had spirits to bear it, it was too gloomy for me.' There may be persons who have been ready to wonder that a poet could exist, and give forth poetry, on the banks of the Ouse; but this may serve to convince them that they are not in Nature's secret. Bees know, what butterflies do not know, that it is not the gayest flowers that hold the honey.

Sacrilegious hands have been busy at Weston, so that these views alone present the scenes alluded to, as they appeared in the Poet's time. The Lodge is tenanted by one who knows not William Cowper, nor cares for him, regarding him as a heretic with all the unsocial bigotry of his Church,

Art. IX. Batavian Anthology; or Specimens of the Dutch Poets; with Remarks on the Poetical Literature of the Netherlands to the End of the Seventeenth Century. By John Bowring, Honorary Correspondent of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, and Harry S. Van Dyk. f.cap 8vo. pp. 242. Price 7s. 6d. London, 1824.

WE owe to the Dutch the discovery of the arts of printing

and oil-painting; we owe to them the pendulum and the microscope; we owe to them much fine fish and much sound divinity; we are indebted to them for one of the very best of our kings; but assuredly, the last thing for which we should have expected to be indebted to the land of tulips, is poetry. It has produced painters, but the Flemish school, though high in art, is poor in fancy: its beauties are travesties of Venus, and its subjects often burlesques upon nature. It can boast of learned men, but they were ashamed of their own language, and hid their names in a more classic dialect, so that we hardly recognise Erasmus and Grotius as Dutchmen. It has produced patriots; and in Holland, the flame of liberty, civil and religious, was kept alive, when in this country it smouldered only in the ashes of the Puritans. But we invest those heroic republicans with a sort of severe virtue, which would not admit of an alliance with the graceful embellishments of life. Yet this is an idle prejudice. What was Milton? What was Akenside? Both presbyterians and stern republicans. Then we might have looked for poets in Holland; but who thinks of learning Dutch, except a merchant or translator of languages? Mr. Bowring, however, tells us, that the language of Holland is the purest of all the Gothic dialects, that it is one of the in

teresting branches growing from the great Teutonic stock, and preserving far more of the original character than the rest of the same family. This must give it attraction in the eyes of a philologist; but what recommends a language to scholars or readers in general, is its literature; and it was not known that Holland, though she had her learned Latinists, possessed any native literature. There has been, as the Translator remarks, ⚫ a real ignorance of the existence of any thing that could put in its claim to the name of Belgian poetry.' But as little did, English literati, in the pride of their native resources, dream of a Russian Anthology. It is but within comparatively a recent date, that we have concerned ourselves about the poets of Germany. And to speak the truth, it seems as if degrees of affinity in language, as sometimes in relationship, operated with a repulsive power in an inverse proportion; for there has been shewn very little disposition to cultivate the acquaintance of the Gothic or Teutonic cognates of our aboriginal tongue. Instead of this, as if the language itself was bent on its own aggrandisement, and seeking to lose the remembrance of its origin in splendid alliances, it has of late admitted scarcely any thing but Greek into its vocabulary, while our Travellers are daily importing Orientalisms of the most venerable date, still further to enrich the most copious and heterogeneous of conventional mediums. But we are very glad to find that Batavia has an anthology, and we are very happy, too, to be able to form some judgement of the productions of Belgian poets, without, at our time of life, being reduced to the painful expedient of learning Dutch. We are not such British critics as to look with pedantic scorn on the attempt to graft a new variety upon our literature; and without offering any equivocal compliments to the long-suffering Translators, whose pleasure in the task has, we doubt not, amply compensated their labour, we frankly tender them our sincere thanks for a very elegant and very interesting volume, which deserves all the room it will occupy in. the poetical library. This premised, we shall immediately proceed to give a few specimens.

The following lines are taken from a writer of the sixteenth century,-Anna Byns. She was inimical to the Reformation, ⚫ and directed her talents principally against its progress.'

'See'st thou the sun and moon's transparent beam,
The fair stars thickly sprinkled o'er the sky?
They're rays which from th' Eternal's fountain stream.
Then turn thy contemplative gaze on high,
Praise the pure light whence these their light obtain,
Whose heavenly power is in the sun-rays seen.
It wakes from earth's dark tomb the buried grain,
And decks with flowers the hills and valleys green,
VOL. XXI. N.S.
X

So that no painter could convey, I ween,

Such magic colour and variety.

Then, reasoning beings, if ye would not err,
Make nature nature's God's interpreter.
Though nought, however fair, by land or sea,
With the Creator's beauty can be rated,

Yet think, while gazing on their brilliancy,

How wondrous He who all those works created.'

On account of the very high eulogy pronounced upon the virtues, talents, and attainments of Jacob Cats (aliter Jacobus Catsius), a poet born towards the close of the sixteenth century, we insert the following jeu d'esprit.

'We read in books of ancient lore,
An image stood in days of yore,

Which, when the sun with splendour dight

Cast on its lips his golden light,

Those lips gave back a silver sound,

Which fill'd for hours the waste around:
But when again the living blaze
Withdrew its music-waking rays,

Or passing clouds its splendour veil'd,
Or evening shades its face conceal'd,
This image stood all silent there,
Nor lent one whisper to the air.
This was of old-And even now,
The man who lives in fortune's glow,
Bears off the palm of sense and knowledge
In town and country, court and college;
And all assert nem. con. whatever
Comes from his mouth is vastly clever :
But when the glowing sun retires,
His reign is o'er, and dimm'd his fires;
And all his praise like vapour flies,—

For who e'er calls a poor man wise?' pp. 77, 8.

We regret that no specimen is given of this Writer's sublime or devotional poetry: the specimens do not correspond to the biographical preface, and would give no idea of the character attributed to Cats. We have been much more interested by the compositions of Gerbrand Brederode. He was principally celebrated for his comedies and his songs. The sentiment of the first stanza of the following delightful little poem, may be thought in character with the pagan cast of the expression; but this will not excuse its impiety: it is, however, less offensive than several passages of the kind in Anacreon Moore.

If all were mine that Jove divine
Or other gods could proffer,
Of pomp or show, or dazzling glow,
I would not take their offer,

If I must thee surrender,

In payment for their splendour.
No! I would seek the gods, and say,
'Tis dearer far on earth to stray,
With heart and soul by anguish riven,
And bow'd by poverty and care,
Than seek at once your promised heaven,
And dwell without my loved-one there.

Should they display unbounded sway
O'er all these kingly regions,
And give to me dominion free
O'er lands and mighty legions;
My heart the gift would treasure,
To rule them all at pleasure,

Not for riches, nor for land,
Not for station, nor command,
Nor for sceptres, crowns, nor power,
Nor for all the world is worth,-
But that I on thee might shower
Every gift from heaven or earth.

'I would decree that all should be
Observant to revere thee,
With bended knee, submissively,

Though princes-kings-stood near thee.
Courts should their glories lend thee,
And empresses attend thee,

And queens upon thy steps should wait,
And pay their tribute to thy state
In low and humble duty;

And place thee on a royal seat,
Deck'd, as well becomes thy beauty,
With splendour and adornment meet.
• An ivory throne should be thine own,
With ornaments the rarest ;
A cloth of red thy floor o'erspread,
To kiss thy footsteps, fairest!

And sweetest flowers be wreathing,
And round thee fondly breathing;

And by thy influence I would prove
How I esteem thy virtues, love!
How thy truth and goodness sway'd me,
More than all my store of gold,
More than thousands that obey'd me,
More than the giant world could hold.

But these I know thou canst forego,
For pride has never found thee,

And I possess more wealthiness
Than all the courtiers round me.

If riches they inherit,

I have them too-in spirit:
And thou dost know as well as I,
That truer greatness deigns to lie
'Neath a garment worn and tatter'd,
Than e'er adorn'd a narrow mind;
And that treasures oft are scater'd
For the basest of our kind.'

The following are from the same poet. He died in 1618.
'Though treasures unbounded are not my share,
I still am as rich as others are;

I care not for gold,

I care not for gold,

The mind may the choicest of treasures hold.

I leave to the miser his joyless hoards,
To Ambition the bliss that command affords,
And ask not, my fair!

And ask not, my fair!

King's sceptre, or robes, or crown to bear.

• For peace

and the noblest enjoyments dwell
In the breast which contentment has made its cell,
And not in vain wealth,

And not in vain wealth,

Which cheats its master of rest by stealth.

And therefore my dearest pleasure I find,
Sweet girl! in the charms of thy lovely mind,
And thy matchless soul,

And thy matchless soul,

Which bends the world to its bright control."

Could fools but feel their want of sense,
And strive to earn intelligence,
They would be wiser for their pains;
But 'tis the bane of folly ever

To think itself supremely clever,-
And thus the fool a fool remains.

The following epigram is almost worthy of a place in the Elegant Extracts: it bears the name of Constantijn Huijgensrelated, we presume, to the Huggins's.

• GENEROUS THANKS.

Once afflicted with fancies, a miserly elf
In a moment of trouble suspended himself;
And a second or two would have ended the clown;
When his servant came in, and with speed cut him down.
But as soon as the miser could give his words scope,
He said, "Tom, I thank you; but--pay for the rope."