Our pamper'd Pigeons, with malignant eyes,
Beheld these inmates and their nurseries :
Though hard their fare at evening and at morn,
(A cruise of water and an ear of corn)1

Yet still they grudg'd that modicum, and thought
A sheaf in every single grain was brought :
Fain would they filch that little food away,
While unrestrain'd these happy gluttons prey;
And much they griev'd to see so nigh their hall,
The bird that warn'd St. Peter of his fall;2
That he should raise his mitred crest on high,
And clap his wings, and call his family
To sacred rites; and vex the Ethereal powers
With midnight matins at uncivil hours;
Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest
Just in the sweetness of their morning rest.
Beast of a bird,3 supinely when he might
Lie still and sleep, to rise before the light.
What if his dull forefathers us'd that cry,
Could he not let a bad example die?

The world was fall'n into an easier

way:

This age knew better than to fast and pray.
Good sense in sacred worship would appear,
So to begin, as they might end the year.
Such feats in former times had wrought the falls

Of crowing chanticleers in cloister'd walls.
Expell'd for this, and for their lands, they fled;
And sister Partlet with her hooded head *

Was hooted hence because she would not pray a-bed..

The way to win the restiff world to God,

Was to lay by the disciplining rod,

Unnatural fasts, and foreign forms of prayer:

Religion frights us with a mien severe.

* The Nuns.

'Tis prudence to reform her into ease,

And put her in undress, to make her please.
A lively faith will bear aloft the mind,

And leave the luggage of good works behind.

1 “A cruise of water and an ear of corn."-The ideal monastic regimen! very different from that of monks in general.

2 “The bird that warn'd St. Peter of his fall.”—This verse is from Spenser :—

“The bird that warnèd Peter of his fall."

Spenser, whom chance had put on the side of the Puritans (for no man would naturally have been more for a gorgeous creed than he), not unwillingly omitted the title of Saint to Peter. The Catholic Dryden as willingly availed himself of the abbreviated past tense to restore it. The reader may remember Sir Roger de Coverley's perplexity at the successive rebukes he received, when a little boy, from a Catholic for asking his way to "Marybone," and from a Puritan for restoring the saint her title.

3 “Beast of a bird."-What a happy anomaly, and vigour of alliteration! How well it comes, too, after the fond pathos of the luxury of the line before it!

PHILIPS.

BORN, 1676-DIED, 1708.

JOHN PHILIPS was a young and lively writer, who, having succeeded in a burlesque, was unfortunately induced to attempt serious poetry, and devoted himself to it with a scholarly dulness which he would probably have seen the folly of in any one else. His serious imitations of Milton are not worth a penny; but his burlesque of the style of Paradise Lost, though it no longer possesses the novelty which made it popular, is still welcome to the lover of wit. The low every-day circumstances, and the lofty classic manner with its nomenclatures, are happily interwoven; the more trivial words are brought in with unlooked-for effect; the motto is particularly felicitous; and the comparison of the rent in the small-clothes with the ship that has sprung a leak at sea, and founders, concludes the poem with a tremendous and calamitous grandeur, only to be equalled by the exclamation of the Spaniard; who

said he had torn his "breeches, as if heaven and

earth had come together."

THE SPLENDID SHILLING.

"Sing, heavenly muse,

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme;"
A shilling, breeches, and chimeras dire.

Happy the man, who, void of cares and strife,
In silken or in leathern purse retains
A Splendid Shilling: he nor hears with pain
New oysters cry'd, nor sighs for cheerful ale;
But with his friends, when nightly mists arise,
To Juniper's Magpye, or Town-hall repairs;
Where, mindful of the nymph, whose wanton eye
Transfix'd his soul, and kindled amorous flames,
Chloe or Phyllis, he each circling glass

Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love.
Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale,
Or pun ambiguous or conundrum quaint.

But I, whom griping penury surrounds,
And hunger, sure attendant upon want,
With scanty offals, and small acid tiff,
(Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain :
Then solitary walk, or doze at home
In garret vile, and with a warming puff
Regale chill'd fingers; or from tube as black
As winter-chimney, or well polish'd jet,
Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming scent.
Not blacker tube, nor of a shorter size,
Smokes Cambro-Briton (vers'd in pedigree,

Sprung from Cadwallador and Arthur, kings
Full famous in romantic tale) when he
O'er many a craggy hill and barren cliff,
Upon a cargo of fam'd Cestrian cheese,
High over-shadowing rides, with a design
To wend his wares at the Arvonian mart,
Or Maridunum, or the ancient town
Yclep'd Brechinia, or where Vaga's stream
Encircles Ariconium, fruitful soil!

Whence flow nectareous wines, that well may vie

With Massic, Setin, or renown'd Falern.

Thus, while my joyless minutes tedious flow,
With looks demure, and silent pace, a Dun,
Horrible monster! hated by gods and men,
To my aërial citadel ascends.*

With vocal heel thrice thundering at my gate,
With hideous accent thrice he calls; I know
The voice ill-boding, and the solemn sound.
What should I do? or whither turn? Amaz'd,
Confounded, to the dark recess I fly

Of wood-hole; straight my bristling hairs erect
Through sudden fear; a chilly sweat bedews
My shuddering limbs, and (wonderful to tell!)
My tongue forgets her faculty of speech;
So horrible he seems! His faded brow

Entrench'd with many a frown, and conic beard,
And spreading band, admir'd by modern saints,
Disastrous acts forbode; in his right hand
Long scrolls of paper solemnly he waves,
With characters and figures dire inscrib'd,

Grievous to mortal eyes; (ye gods avert

Such plagues from righteous men !) Behind him stalks

Another monster, not unlike itself,

Sullen of aspect, by the vulgar call'd

To-wit, his garret.