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THE EMPTINESS OF RICHES.

Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine?
Can we dig peace or wisdom from the mine?
Wisdom to gold prefer, for 'tis much less
To make our fortune than our happiness:
That happiness which great ones often see,
With rage and wonder, in a low degree,
Themselves unblessed. The poor are only poor.
But what are they who droop amid their store?
Nothing is meaner than a wretch of state.
The happy only are the truly great.
Peasants enjoy like appetites with kings,
And those best satisfied with cheapest things.
Could both our Indies buy but one new sense,
Our envy would be due to large expense;
Since not, those pomps which to the great belong,
Are but poor arts to mark them from the throng.
See how they beg an alms of Flattery:
They languish! oh, support them with a lie!
A decent competence we fully taste;

It strikes our sense, and gives a constant feast;
More we perceive by dint of thought alone;
The rich must labour to possess their own,
To feel their great abundance, and request
Their humble friends to help them to be blest;

To see their treasure, hear their glory told,

And aid the wretched impotence of gold.

But some, great souls! and touched with warmth divine

Give gold a price, and teach its beams to shine;

All hoaded treasures they repute a load,

Nor think their wealth their own till well bestowed.

Grand reservoirs of public happiness,

Through secret streams diffusively they bless,

And, while their bounties glide, concealed from view,
Relieve our wants, and spare our blushes too.

WILLIAM OLDYS and RICHARD SAVAGE were poets of a very different character from the two eminent divines whom we have just noticed. Oldys was the natural son of the chancellor of Lyncoln, and was born in 1696. Few particulars of his life have been preserved, though from what little we know it is but too apparent that he was intemperate, profligate, and licentious. He was, for some years, librarian to Lord Oxford, and made a catalogue of that celebrated collection of works for which a bookseller paid thirteen thousand pounds. His familiarity with heraldry also procured for him the office of Norroy King-at-Arms. His death occurred on the fifteenth of April, 1761.

Oldys, literary labors were extensive. His most important works are a Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, the Introduction to Hayward's British Muse, and Poetical Characteristics; besides which the various interesting particu lars of literary history that his industry had amassed, enabled him to assist

every author or bookseller who required a leaf from his voluminous collections. The following exquisite little Anacreontic was occasioned by a fly drinking out of his Cup of Ale:

AN EXTEMPORE SONG.

Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
Drink with me, and drink as I;
Freely welcome to my cup,
Could'st thou sip and sip it up.
Make the most of life you may,
Life is short, and wears away.
Both alike are mine and thine,
Hastening quick to their decline :
Thine 's a summer, mine no more,
Though repeated to threescore;

Threescore summers, when they're gone,

Will appear as short as one.

RICHARD SAVAGE, better known for his misfortunes than for any peculiar merit in his poetry, was the natural son of the Countess of Macclesfield, by Lord Rivers, and was born in London, in 1698. His mother openly avowed her profligacy, in order to obtain a divorce from her husband, with whom she lived unhappily; and the illegitimate child was born after their separation. He was early consigned to the charge of a poor woman, and brought up as her son; but, by his maternal grandmother, Lady Mason, was sent to St. Alban's grammar-school, and, through her care and generosity, received a good education. Whilst he was at school Lord Rivers died; and during his last illness the countess had the inhumanity to declare to him that Savage was dead, by which falsehood he was deprived of a legacy of six thousand pounds intended for him by his father. Savage was now withdrawn from school, and placed apprentice to a shoemaker; but an accident soon revealed to him his birth and the cause of its concealment. His nurse and supposed mother died, and among her effects he found some letters which disclosed the circumstances of his paternity. The discovery must have seemed like the opening of a new world to his hopes and ambition. He was already distinguished for quickness and proficiency, and for a sanguine enthusiastic temperament. A bright prospect now dawned upon him; he was allied to rank and opulence, and though his birth was accompanied by humiliating circumstances, it is not probable that he felt these deeply, in the immediate prospect of emancipation from the low station and ignoble employment to which he had been so harshly condemned. Savage, it is also well known, was agitated by those tender feelings which link the child to the parent, and which must have burst upon him with peculiar force after so unexpected and wonderful a discovery. His mother, however, was an exception to ordinary humanity-an anomaly in the history of the female heart. She had determined to disown him, and, therefore, repulsed every effort at acknowledgment and reconciliation.

Cast thus early upon the world, and under circumstances so peculiar, Savage's remarkable history soon became known, and friends at once appeared to shield the hapless youth from poverty. But unfortunately, the vices and frailties of his own character soon began to display themselves. Though not destitute of a love of virtue and the principles of piety, still his habits were low and sensual. His temper was irritable and capricious; and whatever money he received was immediately spent in the obscure haunts of dissipation. In a tavern brawl he had the misfortune to kill James Sinclair, one of his companions in debauchery, for which he was tried and condemned to death. His relentless mother, on this trying occasion, endeavored to intercept the royal mercy; but his peculiar and extraordinary sufferings were made known by the Countess of Hereford to the Queen, who immediately granted him an unconditional pardon. Savage had already published, as a means of support, several poetical pieces; and he now ventured to address a birthday ode to the Queen, calling himself the Volunteer Laureate.' With this compliment the Queen was so well pleased that she sent him a present of fifty pounds, and continued to bestow upon him the same sum, annually, till her death. His exposed situation finally excited the compassion of Lord Tyrconnel, a friend of his mother, who took him into his family, placed him on terms of equality with its other members, and allowed him two hundred pounds a year. This, as Dr. Johnson remarks, was the 'golden period' of Savage's life; but, as might have been foreseen, the habits of the poet differed widely from those of the peer: they soon quarrelled, and the former was again set adrift on the world. The death of the queen also stopped his pension; but his friends made up an annuity for him of equal amount, to which Pope generously contributed twenty pounds. Savage agreed to withdraw to the country to avoid the temptations of London. He selected Swansea, in Wales, as the place of his retirement; but on his way thither he stopped at Bristol, where he was treated with the greatest hospitality by the opulent merchants and other inhabitants of the city, whose kindness he afterwards repaid by a scurrilous satire. After having remained at Swansea about a year, he returned to Bristol, was arrested for a small debt, cast into prison, and soon after died of a fever, on the first of August, 1743. During his imprisonment and illness Savage was treated with the greatest kindness by his gaoler, who buried him at his own expense in St. Peter's churchyard.

Savage numbered amongst his personal friends, Pope, Young, and Thomson; and he must, therefore, notwithstanding his low propensities and vicious habits, have had some prominent redeeming qualities. He was the author of two plays, and a volume of miscellaneous poems. The tragedy founded on the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury was so successful that he realized from its representation over two hundred pounds. The Wanderer, one of his miscellaneous poems, was written with greater care than most of his other productions, as it was the offspring of that happy period of his life when he lived with Lord Tyrconnel. The versification is

easy and correct, and the work contains many impressive passages. The Bastard is, however, his best performance, and bears the impress of true and energetic feeling. The concluding passage, in which the author mourns over the fatal act by which he deprived a fellow-creature of life, and over his own distressing condition, possesses a genuine and manly pathos :

Is chance a guilt, that my disastrous heart,

For mischief never meant, must ever smart?
Can self-defence be sin? Ah, plead no more!

What though no purposed malice stained thee o'er?
Had heaven befriended thy unhappy side,

Thou hadst not been provoked-or thou hadst died.
Far be the guilt of home-shed blood from all
On whom, unsought, embroiling dangers fall!
Still the pale deed revives, and lives to me,
To me through Pity's eye condemned to see.
Remembrance vails his rage, but swells his fate;
Grieved I forgive, and am grown cool too late.
Young and unthoughtful then; who knows, one day,
What ripening virtues might have made their way!
He might have lived till folly died in shame,
Till kindling wisdom felt a thirst for fame.

He might perhaps his country's friend have proved;
Both happy, generous, candid, and beloved;

He might have saved some worth, now doomed to fall,
And I, perchance, in him have murdered all.

O fate of late repentance! always vain:

Thy remedies but lull undying pain.

Where shall my hope find rest? No mother's care
Shielded my infant innocence with prayer:
No father's guardian hand my youth maintained,
Called forth my virtues, or from vice restrained;
Is it not thine to snatch some powerful arm,
First to advance, then screen from future harm?
Am I returned from death to live in pain?
Or would imperial pity save in vain ?
Distrust it not. What blame can mercy find,
Which gives at once a life, and rears a mind?
Mother, miscalled, farewell-of soul severe,
This sad reflection yet may force one tear:
All I was wretched by to you I owed;
Alone from strangers every comfort flowed!

Lost to the life you gave, your son no more,
And now adopted, who was doomed before,
New born, I may a nobler mother claim,
But dare not whisper her immortal name;
Supremely lovely, and serenely great,
Majestic mother of a kneeling state;
Queen of a people's heart, who ne'er before
Agreed-yet now with one consent adore!
One contest yet remains in this desire,
Who most shall give applause where all admire.

Of the four poets to whom our attention is next to be directed, Blair, Dyer, Mallet, and Thomson, three were Scots, and the other a native of Wales.

ROBERT BLAIR was the son of a clergyman of Edinburgh, and was born in that city, in 1699, His education was conducted in the university of his native place; and in 1731, he was appointed minister of Athelstainford, a parish in East Lothian, where he spent his life devoted to the sacred duties of his ministry, to literature, and to offices of friendship. Besides the emoluments of his parish, he possessed some private fortune, and was therefore enabled to live in a superior style, and cultivate the acquaintance of the neighboring gentry. As a gentleman of pleasing and elegant manners, a poet, and a botanist, as well as a man of scientific and general knowledge, his society was much courted, and he enjoyed the friendship and correspondence of the excellent Dr. Watts. His death occurred on the fourth of February, 1746, at the comparatively early age of forty-seven.

The Grave, Blair's only poetic performance of importance, was written previous to his ordination, but was not published until 1743. It is a complete and powerful poem, of limited design, but of masterly execution. The subject precluded much originality of conception, but, at the same time, is recommended by its awful importance, and its universal application. The style is formed upon that of the old sacred and puritanical poets, elevated by the author's evident admiration for Milton. The following passage, towards the close of the poem, possesses a dignity, a pathos, and a devotional rapture, approaching the higher flights of Young:

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That, after many a painful bleeding step,
Conducts us to our home, and lands us safe
On the long-wished-for shore. Prodigious change!
Our bane turned to a blessing! Death disarmed,
Loses his fellness quite; all thanks to Him
Who scourged the venom out. Sure the last end
Of the good man is peace! How calm his exit!
Night-dews fall not more gently to the ground,
Nor weary worn-out winds expire so soft.
Behold him! in the evening tide of life,
A life well spent, whose early care it was
His riper years should not upbraid his green:
By unperceived degrees he wears away;
Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting!
High in his faith and hopes, look how he reaches
After the prize in view! and, like a bird
That's hampered, struggles hard to get away!
Whilst the glad gates of sight are wide expanded
To let new glories in, the first fair fruits
Of the fast coming harvest. Then, oh then,
Each earth-born joy grows vile, or disappears,
Shrunk to a thing of nought! Oh, how he longs
To have his passport signed, and be dismissed!

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