dle Marches. Whether these are the original words will admit of a doubt.-Sir Walter Scott.

Page 598.-I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAY.-This hymn was written without the remotest idea that any portion of it would ever be employed in the devotions of the Church. Whatever service it has done in that way is owing to the late Bishop of Pennsylvania, then the rector of St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn, who made the selection of verses out of the whole which constitutes the present hymn, and offered it to the Committee on Hymns appointed by the General Convention of. The hymn was at first rejected by the committee, of which the unknown author was a member, who, upon a satirical criticism being made upon it, earnestly voted against its adoption. It was admitted on the importunate application of Dr. Onderdonk to the bishops on the committee. Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature.

Page 630.-ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.-As he was floating down the river to attack Quebec, General Wolfe read the "Elegy" in low tones to his officers, and upon its conclusion said: "I had rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec"'-a remark which has perhaps done as much to perpetuate Wolfe's name as the capture of Quebec, great as that achievement was.

Page 637-STANZAS.-These beautiful lines were composed by Hood on his death-bed.

Page 642.—To ▲ SKELETON.-The manuscript of this poem was found near a skeleton in the London Royal College of Surgeons about 1820. The author has never been found, though a reward of fifty guineas was offered for his discovery. Single Famous Poems.

In a

Page 655.-THE LIE.-This celebrated poem has been attributed to Joshua Sylvester. note of Mr. Peter Cunningham's to his edition of Campbell's Lives of the Poets, referring to the passage in which Campbell says, "We would willingly ascribe the 'Soul's Errand' to him (Raleigh)," we read, "The Lie' is ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh in an answer to it written at the time, and recently discovered in the Cheetham Library at Manchester. That it was written by Raleigh is now almost past a doubt."- Bellew's Poets' Corner.

Page 656.-ARMSTRONG'S GOOD-NIGHT.-These verses are said to have been composed by one of the Armstrongs, executed for the murder of Sir

This is one of the songs which so touched Goldsmith in his youth that nothing he heard sung in after years had an equal charm for him. "The music of the finest singer," he wrote in the Bee, October 13, 1759, "is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairymaid sung me into tears with 'Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-Night' or the 'Cruelty of Barbara Allen;"" and in a letter to his Irish friend Hodson, December 27, 1757, he says: "If I go to the opera where Signora Columba pours out all the mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for 'Lishoy's Fireside' and 'Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-Night,' from Peggy Golden."-Mary Carlyle Aitken.

Page 672.-THE OLD AND YOUNG COURTIER.— The whole of the sixteenth century was marked by important changes of every kind-political, religious, and social. The wars with France and the internal contests of the Roses were over, and the energy of the nation was directed to new objects. Trade and commerce were extended; fresh sources of wealth were developed; and new classes of society sprang up into importance whose riches enabled them to outvie the old landed gentry, but who had few of their hereditary tastes and habits. Hence the innovation of old customs and the decay of ancient manners to which the gentry themselves were compelled to conform. This old song, which is printed in the Percy Reliques from an ancient black-letter eopy in the Pepys Collection, is a lament over the changes which had taken place in the early part of the seventeenth century, as compared with the days of Queen Elizabeth.-Knight's Half Hours with the Best Authors.

Page 677.-BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.-The battle of Blenheim or Hochstadt was fought August 13, 1704, between the English and Austrians, under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the French and Bavarians, under Marshal Tallard, Marson, and the Elector of Bavaria. The latter army, being badly handled and huddled together in the village of Blenheim, was suddenly attacked by Marlborough and completely defeated, losing 30,000 in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Marlborough's loss was but 11.000. This victory completely shattered the French prestige which Louis XIV. had struggled so

hard to obtain.

Page 688.-LINES WRITTEN BY ONE IN THE TOWER.-Chidiock Tychborn shared in Babington's conspiracy, and was executed with him in 1586. (For a fuller account see Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature.)

Page 704.-HONEST POVERTY.-A great critic (Aikin) on songs says that love and wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following is on neither subject, and consequently is no song, but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted into rhyme. In a Letter from Burns to G. Thomson.

Page 726.-ALEXANDER'S FEAST.-St. Cecilia is said to have been a Roman lady born about A. D. 295, bred in the Christian faith, and married to a Pagan nobleman, Valerianus. She told her husband that she was visited nightly by an angel, whom he was allowed to see after his own conversion. The celestial youth had brought from paradise two wreaths, which he gave to them. One was of the lilies of heaven, the other of its roses. They both suffered martyrdom at the beginning of the third century, in the reign of Septimius Severus. The angel by whom Cecilia was visited is referred to in the closing lines of Dryden's "Ode," coupled with a tradition that he had been drawn down to her from heaven by her melodies. In the earliest traditions of Cecilia there is no mention of her skill in music. This part of her story seems to have been developed by a little play of fancy over her relations with the angel, and the great Italian painters-Raffaelle, Domenichino, and others-fixed her position as the patron saint of music by representing her always with symbols of harmony, a harp or organ-pipes. Then came the suggestion adopted in Dryden's "Ode," that the organ was invented by St. Cecilia. The practice of holding musical festivals on St. Cecilia's Day, the 22d of November, began to prevail in England at the close of the seventeenth century. The earliest piece composed for such a meeting was produced in 1683, and was by Henry Purcell. From that date to about 1740 there was an annual Cecilian festival in London, and the fashion spread into the provinces. Poets-Dryden and Pope among them-were applied to for odes which were to celebrate the power of music, and to be set to music for performance as a special feature of the anniversary.-Morley's Shorter Poems.

Page 787.-A CANADIAN BOAT-SONG.-I wrote these words to an air which our boatmen sung to us frequently. The wind was so unfavorable that they were obliged to row all the way, and we were five days in descending the river from Kingston to Montreal, exposed to an intense sun during the day, and at night forced to take shelter from the dews in any miserable hut upon the banks that would receive us. But the magnificent scenery of the St. Lawrence repays all such difficulties.

Our voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in tune together. The original words of the air to which I adapted these stanzas appeared to

be a long, incoherent story, of which I could understand but little, from the barbarous pronunciation of the Canadians. It begins

Dans mon chemin j'ai rencontré Deux cavaliers très-bien montés; and the refrain to every verse was

A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais jouer,
A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais danser.

I ventured to harmonize this air, and have published it. Without that charm which association gives to every little memorial of scenes or feelings that are past, the melody may perhaps be thought common and trifling; but I remember when we have entered, at sunset, upon one of those beautiful lakes into which the St. Lawrence so grandly and unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest compositions of the first masters have never given me; and now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip of our oars in the St. Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the rapids, and all those new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting voyage.-Moore's Poems, note.

Page 741.-A VISION UPON THIS CONCEIT OF THE FAERIE QUEENE.-This sonnet is the first among the commendatory poems prefixed to the earliest edition of The Faerie Queene. As original in conception as it is grand in execution, it is about the finest compliment which was ever paid by poet to poet, such as it became Raleigh to indite and Spenser to receive. Yet it labors under a serious defect. The great poets of the past lose no whit of their glory because later poets are found worthy to share it. Petrarch in his lesser, and Homer in his greater sphere, are just as illustrious since Spenser appeared as before.-Richard Chenevix Trench.

Page 758.-THE DESERTED VILLAGE.-Lissoy, near Ballymahon, where the poet's brother, a clergyman, had his living, claims the honor of being the spot from which the localities of "The Deserted Village" were derived. The church which tops the neighboring hill, the mill, and the brook, are still pointed out; and a hawthorn has suffered the penalty of poetical celebrity, being cut to pieces by those admirers of the bard who desired to have classical toothpick-cases and tobacco - stoppers. Much of this supposed locality may be fanciful, but it is a pleasing tribute to the poet in the land of his fathers.-Sir Walter Scott.

Page 789.-SONG OF THE DYING.-This remarkable poem appeared originally, it is believed, in the St. Helena Magazine, and was afterward copied in the London Spectator and other journals. It relates to the early service of English

officers in India when the army was mowed down by pestilence. When Macaulay's account of the effects of smallpox in England is remembered, as it describes the separation of brothers, sisters, and lovers, it will be seen that this poem gives with wonderful effect what is far nobler, however painful-the very poetry of military despair, but still the dying together of brothers in arms.

Page 789.-TITHONUS.-Tithonus was a beautiful Trojan, beloved by Aurora. He begged the goddess to grant him immortality, which request she granted; but as he had forgotten to ask for youth and vigor, he soon grew old, infirm, and ugly. When life became insupportable, he prayed Aurora to remove him from the world; this, however, she could not do, but she changed him into a grasshopper.-Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

Page 795. THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.-The stealing of Miss Belle Fermor's hair (by Lord Petre) was taken too seriously, and caused an estrangement between the two families, though they had lived so long in great friendship before. A common acquaintance and well-wisher to both desired me to write a poem, to make a jest of it and laugh them together again. It was with this view that I wrote "The Rape of the Lock," which was well received, and had its effect in the two families. Nobody but Sir George Brown was angry, and he was a good deal so, and for a long time. He could not bear that Sir Plume should

talk nothing but nonsense. The machinery was added afterward.-Pope's Letter to Spence.

Page 810.-THE CULPRIT FAY.-This exquisite poem was composed hastily among the highlands of the Hudson in the summer of 1819. The author was walking with some friends on a warm moonlight evening, when one of the party remarked that it would be difficult to write a faery poem, purely imaginative, without the aid of human characters. The party was reassembled two or three days afterward, and "The Culprit Fay" was read to them, nearly as it is now printed. Introduction to the "Culprit Fay."

Page 818.-CoMUS.-" Comus" was presented at Ludlow Castle in 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales. This drama was founded on an actual occurrence. The Earl of Bridgewater then resided at Ludlow Castle; his sons, Lord Brackley and Mr. Egerton, and Lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing through Haywood Forest in Herefordshire, on their way to Ludlow, were benighted, and the lady was for a short time lost. This accident being related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton -at the request of his friend, Henry Lawes the musician, who taught music in the family-wrote

the masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas Night, 1634, the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the representation.

Page 833.-KILMENY.-Besides the old tradition on which this ballad is founded, there are some modern incidents of a similar nature which cannot well be accounted for, yet are as well attested as any occurrence that has taken place in the present age. The relation may be amusing to some readers:

A man in the parish of Traquair and county of Peebles was busied one day casting turf in s large open field opposite the mansion-house-the spot is well known, and is still pointed out as rather unsafe; his daughter, a child seven years of age, was playing beside him and amusing him with her prattle. Chancing to ask a question of her, he was surprised at receiving no answer, and, looking behind him, he perceived that his child was not there. He always averred that, as far as he could remember, she had been talking to him about half a minute before; he was certain it was not above a whole one at most. It was in vain that he ran searching all about like one distracted, calling her name; no trace of her remained. He went home in a state of mind that may be better conceived than expressed, and raised the people of the parish, who searched for her several days with the same success. Every pool in the river, every bush and den on the mountains around, was searched in vain. It was remarked that the father never much encouraged the search, being thoroughly persuaded that she had been carried away by some invisible being, else she could not have vanished so suddenly. As a last resource, he applied to the minister of Inverleithen, a neighboring divine of exemplary piety and real in religious matters, who enjoined him to cause prayers to be offered to God for her in seven Christian churches next Sabbath at the same instant of time; "And then," said he, "if she is

dead, God will forgive our sin in praying for the dead, as we do it through ignorance; and if she is still alive, I will answer for it that all the devils in hell shall be unable to keep her." The injunetion was punctually attended to. She was remembered in the prayers of all the neighboring congregations next Sunday at the same hour, and never were there such prayers for fervor heard before. There was one clergyman in particular, Mr. Davidson, who prayed in such a manner that all the hearers trembled. As the old divine foreboded, so it fell out. On that very day, and within an hour of the time on which these prayers were offered, the girl was found in the Plora wood, sitting picking the bark from a tree. She could give no perfect account of the circumstances which

had befallen to her, but she said she did not want plenty of meat, for that her mother came and fed her with milk and bread several times a day, and sung her to sleep at night. Her skin had acquired a bluish cast, which gradually wore off in the course of a few weeks. Her name was Jane Brown; she lived to a very advanced age, and was known to many still alive. Every circumstance of this story is truth, if the father's report of the suddenness of her disappearance may be relied on.

Another circumstance, though it happened still later, is not less remarkable. A shepherd of Tushilaw, in the parish of Ettrick, whose name was Walter Dalgleish, went out to the heights of that farm one Sabbath morning to herd the young sheep of his son and let him go to church. He took his own dinner along with him, and his son's breakfast. When the sermon was over, the lad went straight home, and did not return to his father. Night came, but nothing of the old shepherd appeared. When it grew very late his dog came home-seemed terrified, and refused to take any meat. The family were ill at ease during the night, especially as they had never known his dog leave him before; and early next morning the lad arose and went to the height to look after his father and his flock. He found his sheep all scattered, and his father's dinner unbroken, lying on the same spot where they had parted the day before. At the distance of twenty yards from the spot the plaid which the old man wore was lying as if it had been flung from him, and a little farther on, in the same direction, his bonnet was found, but nothing of himself. The country people, as on all such occasions, rose in great numbers and searched for him many days. My father and several old men still alive were of the party. He could not be found or heard of, neither dead nor alive, and at length they gave up all thoughts of ever seeing him more. On the twentieth day after his disappearance, a shepherd's wife, at a place called Berry bush, came in as the family were sitting down to dinner and said that if it were possible to believe that Walter Dalgleish was still in existence, she would say yonder was be coming down the hill. They all ran out to watch the phenomenon, and as the person approached nigher they perceived that it was actually he, walking without his plaid and his bonnet. The place where he was first descried is not a mile distant from that where he was last seen, and there is neither brake, bog, nor bush. When he came into the house he shook hands with them all -asked for his family, and spoke as if he had been absent for years, and as if convinced something had befallen them. As they perceived something singular in his looks and manner, they unfortunately forbore asking him any questions

at first, but desired him to sit and share their dinner. This he readily complied with, and began to sup some broth with seeming eagerness. He had only taken one or two spoonfuls when he suddenly stopped, a kind of rattling sound was heard in his breast, and he sank back in a faint. They put him to bed, and from that time forth he never spoke another word that any person could make sense of. He was removed to his own home, where he lingered a few weeks and died. What befell him remains to this day a mystery, and for ever must.-Hogg's Poems.

Page 841.-CHRISTABEL.- Coleridge's friend, Mr. Gilman, with whom he spent much of the latter part of his life, and who began his biography, tells us that "the following relation was to have occupied a third and fourth canto, and to have closed the tale: Over the mountains the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, hastes with his disciple, but in consequence of one of those inundations supposed to be common to this country, the spot only where the castle once stood is discovered, the edifice being washed away. He determines to return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all that is passing, like the Weird Sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reappearing, however, she waits the return of the Bard, exciting, in the mean time, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted, though absent, lover of Christabel. Next ensues a courtship most distressing to Christabel, who feelsshe knows not why-great disgust for her oncefavored knight. This coldness is very painful to the baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with this hated suitor. The real lover, returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign of her betrothment. Thus defeated, the supernatural being, Geraldine, disappears. As predicted, the castle-bell tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and, to the exceeding great joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follow a reconciliation and explanation between the father and daughter.'”—Morley's Shorter Poems.

Page 848.-KUBLA KHAN.-In the summer of the year 1797 the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight in

disposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effect of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto, and thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall." The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines, if that, indeed, can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but alas! without the after-restoration of the latter.-Coleridge's Poems.

Page 851.-THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN.— The story of the Pied Piper-that first by his pipe gathered together all the rats and mice and drowned them in the river, and afterward, being defrauded of his reward, which the town promised him if he could deliver them from the plague of those vermin, took his opportunity and by the same pipe made the children of the town follow him, and leading them into a hill that opened, buried them there all alive-has so evident proof of it in the town of Hammel where it was done, that it ought not at all to be discredited. For the fact is very religiously kept among their ancient records, painted out also in their church-windows, and is an epoch joined with the year of our Lord in their bills and indentures and other law instruments.-Henry Moore's Philosophy.

Page 855.-THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. Wordsworth has given the following account of the origin of "The Ancient Mariner." "It arose," he says, "out of the want of five pounds which Coleridge and I needed to make a tour together in Devonshire. We agreed to write jointly a poem, the subject of which Coleridge took from a dream, which a friend of his had once dreamt, concerning a person suffering under

a dire curse from the commission of some crime. I supplied the crime, the shooting of the albatross, from an incident I had met with in one of Shelvocke's voyages. We tried the poem conjointly for a day or two, but we pulled different ways, and only a few lines of it are mine."Frederick Saunders's Festival of Song.

Page 878.-THE ABBOT M'KINNON.-To describe

the astonishing scenes to which this romantic tale relates, Icolmkill and Staffa, would only be multiplying pages to no purpose. By the Temple of the Ocean is meant the Isle of Staffa, and by its chancel the Cave of Fingal.

St. Columba placed the nuns in an island at a little distance from Iona, where he would not suffer either a cow or a woman; "for where there are cows," said he, "there must be women; and where there are women, there must be mischief." -Hogg's Poems.

Page 890.-THE LAIRD o' COCK PEN.-Miss Ferrier, who wrote Marriage Destiny, etc., added the last two verses.

Page 897.-BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.-The original tale here playfully modernized is in the Eighth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Jove and Mercury are the originals of the two brother hermits. Finding hospitality only in the thatched cottage of the poor old couple, Baucis and Philemon, the gods after their entertainment took the old couple to the top of the hill, whenee they saw the houses and lands of their unebaritable neighbors all swallowed in a lake. Only their little home remained, which expanded to a temple. In this they served as the priests of Jove until they were changed into companion trees, hung over with fresh garlands by their worshippers.-Morley's Shorter Poems

Page 912.-THE VICAR OF BRAY.-The Vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a Papist under the reign of Henry VIII., and a Protestant under Edward VI.; he was a Papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth. When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religions creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, "Not so, neither; for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and die the Vicar of Bray."

This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a proverb peculiar to this county: "The Vicar of Bray will be Vicar of Bray still." But how has it happened that this vicar should be so notorious, and one in much higher rank, acting the same part, should have escaped notice? Dr. Kitchen, Bishop of Llandaff. from an idle abbot under Henry VIII. was made a busy bishop;