in consequence of which he frequently hazarded his life in duels, and exceeded the bounds of his moderate fortune. A dispute with the Lord Privy Seal, about part of his estate, compelled him to revisit his native country, where he had designed to remain; but the pleasures of the English court, and the friendships which he had there contracted, finally induced him to return to London. Soon after his arrival he was made master of the horse to the Duchess of York, and married the lady Frances, eldest daughter of the Earl of Burlington. Roscommon was now settled in life; and though still addicted to the vice of gambling, yet he found time to cultivate his taste for literature, and to produce a poetical Essay on Translated Verse, a translation of Horace's Art of Poetry,' and some minor poems. He also planned, in conjunction with Dryden, a scheme for refining the English language, and fixing its standard. But while he was meditating on this and similar topics connected with literature, the arbitrary measures of James the Second, threw the whole nation into a state of alarm; and Roscommon, dreading the result, prepared to retire to Rome, saying, 'It was best to sit near the chimney when the chamber smoked.' An attack of the gout, however, prevented his departure, and he died on the seventeenth of January, 1684, in the fifty-second year of his age. At the moment in which he expired,' says Johnson, he uttered, with an energy of voice that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of 'Dies Iræ':

My God, my Father, and my Friend,
Do not forsake me in my end!

Roscommon's 'Essay on Translated Verse,' is his only production which may be said to elevate him above mediocrity. In it he inculcates, in didactic poetry, the rational principles of translation previously laid down by Cowley and Denham; and it is worthy of remark, that though Milton's 'Paradise Lost' had then been published only four years, Roscommon notices the sixth book of that great poem for its sublimity. Dryden has heaped on this poet the most lavish praise, and Pope has said that 'every author's merit was his own;' but posterity has not confirmed these judgments. Roscommon stands on the same ground with Denham-elegant and sensible, but cold and unimpassioned. We subjoin a single passage from his Essay on Translated Verse,' and his version of the 'Dies Iræ.'

CAUTION AGAINST FALSE PRIDE.

On sure foundations let your fabric rise,
And with attractive majesty surprise;

Not by affected meretricious arts,

But strict harmonious symmetry of parts;

Which through the whole insensibly must pass

With vital heat, to animate the mass.

A pure, an active, an auspicious flame,

And bright as heaven, from whence the blessing came.

But few-0 few! souls free-ordain'd by fate,

The race of gods have reach'd that envied height

No rebel Titan's sacrilegious crime,

By heaping hills on hills, can hither climb:

The grisly ferryman of hell denied
Æneas entrance, till he knew his guide.
How justly then will impious mortals fall,
Whose pride would soar to heaven without a call.
Pride (of all others the most dangerous fault)
Proceeds from want of sense, or want of thought.
The men who labour and digest things most,
Will be much apter to despond than boast;
For if your author be profoundly good,
'T will cost you dear before he 's understood.
How many ages since has Virgil writ!

How few are they who understand him yet!
Approach his altars with religious fear:
No vulgar deity inhabits there.
Heaven shakes not more at Jove's imperial nod
Than poets should before their Mantuan god.
Hail mighty Maro! may that sacred name
Kindle my breast with thy celestial flame,

Sublime ideas and apt words infuse:

The Muse instructs my voice, and thou inspire the Muse.

ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

That day of wrath, that dreadful day.
Shall the whole world in ashes lay,
As David and the Sibyls say.

What horror will invade the mind,
When the strict Judge, who would be kind,
Shall have few venial faults to find!

The last loud trumpet's wondrous sound,
Shall through the rending tombs rebound,
And wake the nations under ground.

Nature and Death shall, with surprise,
Behold the pale offender rise,

And view the Judge with conscious eyes.

Then shall, with universal dread,
The sacred mystic book be read,

To try the living and the dead.

The Judge ascends his awful throne;
He makes each secret sin be known,
And all with shame confess their own.

O then, what interest shall I make

To save my last important stake,

When the most just have cause to quake?

Thou mighty formidable King,

Thou mercy's unexhausted spring,

Some comfortable pity bring.

Forget not what my ransom cost,
Nor let my dear-bought soul be lost
In storms of guilty terror tost.

Prostrate my contrite heart I rend,

My God, my Father, and my Friend,

Do not forsake me in my end!

Well may they curse their second breath,

Who rise to a reviving death.

Thou great Creator of mankind,

Let guilty man compassion find.

CHARLES SACKVILLE, Earl of Dorset, was a direct descendant from Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, and was born on the twenty-fourth of January, 1637. He received his education under the guidance and instruction of a private tutor, after which he travelled upon the continent, passing most of his time in Italy, whence he returned to England just before the Restoration. He soon after entered the House of Commons, where he might have shone conspicuously, had he devoted himself to the politics of the times; but he unfortunately lived in an age when pleasure was more in fashion than business, and he applied his talents rather to looks, conversation, gallantry, and the fashionable excesses of Charles's court, than to the more important pursuits of a statesman. In the first Dutch war, he went a volunteer under the Duke of York; and the night before the naval engagement, in which Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was, with all his crew, blown up, he wrote a song, which is his best composition, and which Prior pronounced, 'one of the prettiest songs that ever was made.' On his return from the war, Dorset was made a lord of the bedchamber to Charles the Second; and on account of his rare accomplishments and distinguished politeness, was frequently, sent by that monarch, on embassies of compliment into France. When William and Mary came into power, Dorset was made lord chamberlain of the household; and as his office obliged him to take the king's pension from Dryden, it is said that he allowed him an equivalent out of his own estate.

Dorset was a very liberal patron of the wits of that age, and took great pleasure in promoting their interest. He introduced Butler's 'Hudibras' to the notice of the court, was consulted by Waller, and almost idolized by Dryden. Hospitable, generous, and refined, we need not wonder at the incense which was heaped upon him by his contemporaries. His works are trifling, a few satires and songs making up the catalogue. They are eloquent, and sometimes forcible; but when a man like Prior writes of them, that there is a lustre In his verses like that of the sun in Claude Lorraine's landscapes,' it is impossible not to be struck with that gross adulation of rank and fashion which disgraced the literature of the age. Dorset died at Bath, on the nineteenth of January, 1706, in his seventieth year. To the following song we have already alluded, and we introduce it as his best performance :

6

SONG.

(Written at sea, 1665, the night before an engagement in the first Dutch war.)

To all you ladies now at land,

We men at sea indite;

But first would have you understand

How hard it is to write;

The Muses now, and Neptune too,

We must implore to write to you.
With a fa la, la, la, la.

For though the Muses should prove kind,
And fill our empty brain;

Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind,
To wave the azure main,

Our paper, pen, and ink, and we,
Roll up and down our ships at sea.
With a fa, &c.

Then, if we write not by each post,
Think not we are unkind:
Nor yet conclude our ships are lost

By Dutchmen or by wind:

Our tears we'll send a speedier way;
The tide shall bring them twice a-day.
With a fa, &c.

The king with wonder and surprise,
Will swear the seas grow bold;
Because the tides will higher rise
Than e'er they did of old:
But let him know it is our tears
Bring floods of grief to Whitehall stairs.
With a fa, &c.

Should foggy Opdam chance to know

Our sad and dismal story,

The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe.

And quit their fort at Goree :

For what resistance can they find

From men who 've left their hearts behind?
With a fa, &c.

Let wind and weather do its worst,

Be you to us but kind;

Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse,

No sorrow we shall find:

'Tis then no matter how things go,

Or who's our friend, or who 's our foe.
With a fa, &c.

To pass our tedious hours away,

We throw a merry main;

Or else at serious ombre play;

But why should we in vain

Each other's ruin thus pursue?

We were undone when we left you.
With a fa, &c.

But now our fears tempestuous grow,
And cast our hopes away;
While you, regardless of our woe,

Sit careless at a play:

Perhaps permit some happier man
To kiss your hand, or flirt your fan.
With a fa, &c.

When any mournful tune you hear,
That dies in every note,

As if it sigh'd with each man's care

For being so remote:

Think then how often love we've made

To you, when all those tunes were played.
With a fa, &c.

In justice, you can not refuse

To think of our distress,

When we for hopes of honour lose

Our certain happiness:

All those designs are but to prove
Ourselves more worthy of your love.
With a fa, &c.

And now we've told you all our loves,
And likewise all our fears,

In hopes this declaration moves

Some pity for our tears;

Let's hear of no inconstancy,

We have too much of that at sea.

With a fa la, la, la, la.

Sir CHARLES SEDLEY, one of the brightest satellites of the court of Charles the Second, was the son of Sir John Sedley, and was born at Aylesford, Kent, in 1639. At seventeen years of age he became a fellow-commoner of Wadham College, Oxford; but becoming dissatisfied with college life, he retired, after passing a year or two at his studies, without a degree, to his native county, where he remained, apparently unoccupied, until the Restoration. As soon, however, as that important event occurred he went to London in order to join the general jubilee; and at once commenced wit, courtier, poet, and gallant. He was so much admired for his taste and elegance, that he became a kind of oracle among the poets; and no performance was either applauded or condemned till Sir Charles Sedley had given judgment upon it. His popularity and influence induced the king to ask him, jestingly, if he had not obtained from Nature a patent to be Apollo's viceroy?'

Sedley's career at court was, for some years, brilliant almost without a parallel; but it cost him the sacrifice of his estate, his time, and his morals.