penniless contempt? In this nation the worship of military honors is fast subsiding, the perception of the greatness and beneficence of intellect is fast growing. We are coming to see that it is out of our immortal minds, and not out of our swords and cannons, that our highest, purest, and most imperishable glory has grown and will grow. The people every day are more and more coming to this knowledge, and making it felt by government and the world. Let the people, then, wait no longer of Shakspeare clubs; let them leave them to their bottles and their beef; let them wait of no dilettanti authors, commentators, or scribbling publishers; let them wait of no governments, but let the people stand forward, and pay a national honor to Shakspeare, and in Shakspeare to justice and to intellect. The money, I have said, which is spent in visiting the trumpery collected as his at Stratford would have purchased a large estate for the descendants of the Shakspeare family. That has not been done, and never will be done; but a penny a piece from every person in this kingdom, who has derived days and months of delight from the pages of Shakspeare, would purchase an estate equal to that of Strathfieldsaye, or of Blenheim. What a glorious tribute would this be from the people of England to their great dramatic poet-the greatest dramatic poet in the world! How far would it rise above the tributes to violence and bloodshed! The tribute of a nation's love to pure and godlike intellect! This estate should not be appropriated on the feudal principle of primogeniture; should not be the estate of one, but of the family; should be vested in trustees chosen by the people, to educate, and honorably settle in the world every son and daughter of the Shakspearian family; and to support and comfort the old age of the unfortunate and decrepit of it. That it should not encourage idleness and a mischievous dependence, all such persons, when educated and endowed with a sufficient sum to enable them to make their way in the world, should be

The nation would then have

left so to make their way. discharged its parental duties toward them, and they could expect no more. They should be educated to expect no more, and more should not be extended to them, except in case of utter misfortune or destitution, and then only on a scale that should be in itself no temptation.

Such an estate, founded by the people, would be the noblest monument ever yet erected to any man, or on any occasion. Shakspeare has a decent monument at Stratford, and an indifferent one in Westminster Abbey; this would be one worthy of him and of the nation which produced him. It would take away from us a melancholy opprobrium, and confer on him and the British people an equal glory.

THE chief places connected with the name of Cowley are Barn-Elms and Chertsey, both in Surrey. Cowley is one of those poets who had a great reputation in his own time, but who at the present day are only read by those who are anxious to know the real history of the poetry of their country. He is so overloaded with the most outrageous conceits, and his whole system of versification is at once so affected, artificial, and yet rugged and often mean, that he has, in the midst of so much more genuine inspiration, fallen into almost utter neglect. Johnson, often unjust to our poets, can hardly be said to have been so to Cowley, when he says of him and the other metaphysical poets, that "they were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavor; but unluckily resolv ing to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they wrote only verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables." . . . . From this account

of their compositions it will be readily inferred that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections. "For these reasons," Johnson adds, "that though in his own time considered of unrivaled excellence, and as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him, Cowley's reputation could not last. His character of

writing was, indeed, not his own: he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring was bright and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows."

In Cowley, in fact, you will find many beautiful sentiments, and much learning; but he seems always playing with his matter, not dealing earnestly with it; constructing toys and gewgaws, not everlasting structures. You have artifice instead of feeling, and conceits and often downright fustian instead of heart, soul, and human passion. Who would now willingly wade through pages of such doggerel as this?

"Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve,
Why this reprieve?

Why doth she my advowson fly,

Incumbency?

To sell thyself dost thou intend

By candle's end;

And hold the contract thus in doubt,

Life's taper out?

Think but how soon the market fails," &c.

Who can tolerate, after being raised to some expectation by a beginning like the following, the end which comes?

"Begin the song, and strike the living lyre:

Lo! how the years to come a numerous and well-fitted quire,
All hand in hand do decently advance,

And to my song with smooth and equal measure dance;

While the dance lasts, how long soe'er it be,
My music's voice shall bear it company,
Till all gentle notes be drowned
In the last trumpet's dreadful sound.

But stop, my muse

Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,
Which does to rage begin-

'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouthed horse

"Twill no unskillful touch endure,

But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure."

As a specimen of his fiction, Johnson has quoted his description of the Archangel Gabriel:

"He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,

That e'er the mid-day sun pierced through with light;

Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,

Washed from the morning beauties' deepest red;
An harmless, fluttering meteor shone for hair,

And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;

He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleased the eyes;

This he with starry vapors sprinkles all,

Took in their prime before they grow ripe and fall;
Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade,

The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made."

This comes but indifferently after a passage of Byron or Shelley. But, in fact, Cowley seems to have been a man who could not be permanently and decidedly any thing. He could not rise out of affectations, and dubious, half-way sort of positions, either in poetry or in life. He would fain pass for an ardent lover, and general admirer of the fair sex, and published a poem called "The Mistress," on the ground stated in the preface to one of its editions, "that poets are scarcely thought freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging themselves to be true to love." This is genuine Cowley: he did not write a poem on a love subject because he was full of the subject, but because it seemed to be expected of a poet. It was not passion and admiration that fired him, but it was nec