POETS. MATTHEW GREEN. 、 MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) was author of a poem, The Spleen,' which received the praises of Pope and Gray. His parents were dissenters, but the poet, it is said, afterwards left their communion, disgusted with their austerity. He obtained an appointment as clerk in the Custom-house. His disposition was cheerful; but this did not save him from occasional attacks of low spirits, or spleen, as the favourite phrase was in his time. Having tried all imaginable remedies for his malady, he conceived himself at length able to treat it in a philosophical spirit, and therefore wrote his poem, which adverts to all its forms, and their appropriate remedies, in a style of comic verse resembling Hudibras,' but allowed to be eminently original. Green terminated a quiet inoffensive life of celibacy in 1737, at the age of forty-one. The Spleen' was first published by Glover, the author of 'Leonidas,' himself a poet of some pretension in his day. Gray thought that even the wood-notes of Green often break out into strains of real poetry and music.' As The Spleen' is almost unknown to modern readers, we present a few of its best passages. The first that follows contains one line marked by italic, which is certainly one of the happiest and wises' things ever said by a British author. It seems, however, to be imitated from Shakspeare Man but a rush against Othello's breast, Cures for Melancholy. To cure the mind's wrong bias, spleen, Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been Since mirth is good in this behalf, If spleen-fogs rise at break of day, In rainy days keep double guard, I dress my face with studious looks, And on the drowning world remark: Sometimes I dress, with women sit, And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn, And forces Folly through the grate This view, profusely when inclined, Reforming scheines are none of mine; At once both wind and stream contend: And zeal, when baffled, turns to spleen. Contentment-A Wish. Forced by soft violence of prayer, And dreams, beneath the spreading beech, A farm some twenty miles from town, While soft as breezy breath of wind, Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep, stray, And Naiads on the margin play, As men at land see storms at sea, Where cows may cool and geese may Cursed with such souls of base alloy, swim; As can possess, but not enjoy; ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE. A series of six imitations of living authors was published in 1736 by ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE (1706-1760), which obtained great popularity, and are still unsurpassed. The nearest approach to them are the serious parodies in the Rejected Addresses.' Browne was an amiable, accomplished man. He sat in parliament for some time as member for Wenlock in Shropshire. He wrote a Latin poem, De Animi Immortalitate,' in the style of Lucretius, and an English poem on the subject of Design and Beauty.' His imitations, however, are his happiest work. The subject of the whole is 'A Pipe of Tobacco,' and the first of the series is 'A New Year's Ode,' an imitation of Col ley Cibber, beginning thus: Recitativo. Old battle-array, big with horror, is fled, Air. When summer suns grow red with heat, - Tobacco tempers Phoebus' ire; When wintry storms around us beat, Tobacco cheers with gentle fire. Yellow autumn, youthful spring, Recitativo. Like Neptune, Cæsar guards Virginian fleets, Old Ocean trembles at Britannia's power, Cibber's laureate effusions are here very happily travestied. Ambrose Philips's namby-pamby is also well hit off: Little tube of mighty power, And thy snowy taper waist With my finger gently braced, Thomson is the subject of the third imitation: O thou, matured by glad Hesperian suns, That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought, Flash on thy bard, and with exalting fires Tonch the mysterious lip that chants thy praise, Each parent ray; then rudely rammed illume, But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join Stream life and joy into the Muse's bowl. My Muse: oh, fan me with thy zephyrs boon, Burst forth all oracle and mystic song. This appears to be one of the happiest of the imitations; but as the effect of Thomson's turgid style and diction employed on such a theme is highly ludicrous, the good-natured poet was offended with Browne, and indited some angry lines in reply. The fourth imitation is in the style of Young's Satires,' which are less strongly marked by any mannerism than his Night Thoughts,' not then written. Pope is thus imitated: Blest leaf whose aromatic gales dispense Swift concludes the series, but though Browne caught the manner of the dean, he also imitated his grossness. SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS. As a satirical poet, courtier, and diplomatist, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1709-1759) enjoyed great popularity during the latter part of the reign of George II Lord Hervey. Lord Chesterfield, Pulteney, and others, threw off political equibs and light satires; but Williams eclipsed them all in liveliness and pungency. He was introduced into public life by Sir Robert Walpole, whom he warmly supported. 'He had come, on the death of his father, Mr. Hanbury, into parliament in 1733, having taken the name of Williams for a large estate in Monmouthshire, left to him by a godfather who was no relation. After his celebrated political poetry in ridicule of Walpole's antagonists, having unluckily lan.pooned Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, with her second husband, Mr Hussey, an Irish gentleman, and his countrymen, he retreated, with too little spirit, from the storm that threatened him into Wales, whence he was afterwards glad to accept missions to the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and Russia.'* One verse of this truculent satire may be quoted: But careful Heaven reserved her Grace For one of the Milesian race On stronger parts depending: Pulteney, in 1742, succeeded in procuring the defeat and resignation of his rival Sir Robert Walpole, and was himself elevated to the peerage under the title of Earl of Bath. From this period he sank from popular favour into great contempt, and some of the bitterest of Williams's verses were levelled at him. In his poem of the Statesman,' he thus characterises the new peer: When you touch on his lordship's high birth, Say we are all but the sons of the earth, Proclaim him as rich as a Jew, Yet attempt not to reckon his bounties, Yet speak not a word of the countess. Say he made a great monarch change hands: Say he made a great statesman of Sands- In another attack on the same parties, we have this reinted verse: How Sands, in sense and person queer, Jumped from a patriot to a peer No mortal yet knows why; How Pulteney trucked the fairest fame To call his vixeu by. Such pasquinades, it must be confessed, are as personal and virulent as any of the subsequent political poetry of the Rolliad or Anti-Jacobin Review.' The following is a more careful specimen of Williams's character-painting. It is part of a sketch of General Churchill-a man not unlike Thackeray's Major Pendennis: Croker: Lord Hervey's Memotre |