he was fettered and set in the stocks for the whole day. And the next day after the like was done by him at the cross in Cheapside, and in both places he read his confession, of which we made mention before; and was from Cheapside conveyed and laid up in the Tower.

But it was ordained, that this winding-ivy of a Plantagenet should kill the true tree itself. For Perkin after he had been awhile in the Tower, began to insinuate himself into the favour and kindness of his keepers, servants of the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Digby, being four in number; Strangeways, Blewet, Astwood, and Long Roger. These varlets, with mountains of promises, he sought to corrupt, to obtain his escape; but knowing well that his own fortunes were made so contemptible as he could feed no man's hopes, and by hopes he must work, for rewards he had none, he had contrived with himself, a vast and tragical plot; which was, to draw into his company Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, then prisoner in the Tower; whom the weary life of a long imprisonment, and the often and renewing fears of being put to death, had softened to take any impression of counsel for his liberty. This young prince he thought these servants would look upon, though not upon himself; and therefore, after that by some message by one or two of them, he had tasted of the Earl's consent; it was agreed that these four should murder their master, the lieutenant, secretly, in the night, and make their best of such money and portable goods of his, as they should find ready at hand, and get the keys of the Tower, and presently let forth Perkin and the earl. But this conspiracy was revealed in time, before it could be executed. And in this again the opinion of the king's great wisdom did surcharge him with a sinister fame, that Perkin was but his bait, to entrap the Earl of Warwick. And in the very instant while this conspiracy was in working, as if that also had been the king's industry, it was fated that there should break forth a counterfeit Earl of Warwick, a cordwainer's son, whose name was Ralph Wilford; a young man taught and set on by an Augustin friar, called Patrick. They both from the parts of Suffolk came forwards into Kent, where they did not only privily and underhand give out that this Wilford was the true Earl of Warwick, but also the friar, finding some light credence in the people, took the boldness in the pulpit to declare as much, and to incite the people to come in to his aid. Whereupon they were both presently apprehended, and the young fellow executed, and the friar condemned to perpetual imprisonment. This also happening so opportunely, to represent the danger to the king's estate from the Earl of Warwick, and thereby to colour the king's severity that followed; together with the madness of the friar so vainly and desperately to divulge a treason before it had gotten any manner of strength; and the saving of the friar's life, which nevertheless was, indeed, but the privilege of his order; and the pity in the common people, which if it run in a strong stream, doth ever

cast up scandal and envy, made it generally rather talked than believed
that all was but the king's device. But howsoever it were, hereupon
Perkin, that had offended against grace now the third time, was at the
last proceeded with, and by commissioners of oyer and determiner, ar-
raigned at Westminster, upon divers treasons committed and perpetrated
after his coming on land within this kingdom, for so the judges advised,
for that he was a foreigner, and condemned, and a few days after executed
at Tyburn; where he did again openly read his confession, and take it
upon his death to be true. This was the end of this little cockatrice of a
king, that was able to destroy those that did not espy him first.
It was
one of the longest plays of that kind that had been in memory, and might
perhaps have had another end, if he had not met with a king both wise,
stout, and fortunate.

16. THE ANCIENT MANSION.

CRABBE.

[CRABBE has been called the Teniers of poetry; by which title it is meant to be conveyed that he painted the minute details of low life with a brilliant fidelity. There is something more in Crabbe than we find in the Dutch painter. He exhibits, indeed, the coarse pleasures of the poor-he has scenes of boisterous merriment and sottish degradation;-but he is also the painter of the strong passions and deep feelings that belong to the common nature of the humble and the great. If he had sufficiently kept his power of delineating character within the limits of pleasurable effects-the greatest test of all high art-if he had not too frequently revelled in descriptions that only excite unmixed disgust—he would have been the Wilkie of poetry-a much higher order of artist than the whole race of Tenierses, and Ostades, and Jan Steens. Crabbe will always be a popular poet, to a certain extent; although the chances are that as real poetry comes to be better understood, a great deal that he has written will be forgotten and neglected. It was said in his praise, by Mr. Jeffrey, (whose recent death we have to deplore,) in 1810, "His characters and incidents are as common as the elements out of which they are compounded are humble; and not only has he nothing prodigious or astonishing in any of his representations, but he has not even attempted to impart any of the ordinary colours of poetry to these vulgar materials. He has no moralizing swains or sentimental tradesmen." This is a sarcasm against the poetry of Wordsworth, which it was then the fashion to sneer at. It would not be difficult to show that the "moralizing swains and sentimental tradesmen” are really as true to our higher nature-that nature with which poetry has especially to deal-as "the depraved, abject, diseased, and neglected poor-creatures in whom every thing amiable or respectable has been extinguished by sordid passions or brutal debauchery"—are revolting accidents which poetry ought to avoid. Indeed, if Crabbe had not higher delineations than such as these (which are too common in his writings), he would not take the rank which he deservedly holds amongst English poets. It is where he does approach to the despised moralists and sentimentalists of another school, that he has the best assurance of an undying fame.

George Crabbe was the son of a humble tradesman at Aldborough, in Suffolk. He was born in 1754. He was apprenticed to a surgeon: but his father was unable to afford the means of completing his professional education. In 1780, he went to London, a literary adventurer; sustained many hardships and mortifications; was

finally rescued from poverty by the kindness of Edmund Burke; entered the church; and enjoyed competence and universal esteem till his death in 1832. His collected works, with a Life by his son, in eight volumes, were published in 1834.]

17. THE SPIDER AND THE BEE.

[THE following extract will give some notion of the vein of the famous Dean of St. Patrick's. But no adequate notion can be afforded by extracts. Gulliver's Travels,' offensive as it is in many respects, may be in the hands of every reader for a shilling or two;-and there, and perhaps better even in 'The Tale of a Tub,' may be fitly learnt the great powers of Swift as a satirist, and his almost unequalled mastery of a clear, vigorous, and idiomatic style. 'The Battle of the Books,' from which our extract is taken, was one of Swift's earlier performances. It had

reference to the great contest which was then going on between the advocates of Ancient Learning and Modern Learning. The bee represents the Ancients-the spider the Moderns. Such contests are as harmless and as absurd as the more recent disputes amongst our French neighbours, about the comparative merits of the Classic and the Romantic schools. Real criticism can find enough to admire in whatever form genius works. The apologue of the Spider and the Bee was not unjustly applied, some dozen years ago, to a coterie of self-applauding writers, "furnished with a native stock," who, despising accuracy and careful investigation, turned up their noses at those who were labouring to make knowledge the common possession of all.

Jonathan Swift was born in 1667, and died in 1745. An excellent edition of his works, in nineteen volumes, was edited by Sir Walter Scott. There is a cheap edition, in two large octavo volumes, published in 1841.]

Upon the highest corner of a large window there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification. After you had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon all occasions of prey or defence. In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from below: when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went; where, expatiating awhile, he at last happened to alight upon one of the outward walls of the spider's citadel; which yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation. Thrice he endeavoured to force his passage, and thrice the centre shook. The spider within, feeling the terrible convulsion, supposed at first that nature was approaching to her final dissolution; or else, that Beelzebub, with all his legions, was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects* whom his enemy had slain and devoured. However, he at length valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them from the rugged remnants of the cobweb. By this time the spider was adventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the ruins and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wits' end; he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready to burst. At length, casting his eye upon the bee and wisely gathering causes from events (for they knew each other by sight), "A plague split you." said he, "for a giddy puppy, is it you, with a vengeance, that have made this litter * Beelzebub, in the Hebrew, signifies lord of flies.

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here? could you not look before you? do you think I have nothing else to do but to mend and repair after you?"--" Good words, friend," said the bee (having now pruned himself, and being disposed to be droll): "I'll give you my hand and word to come near your kennel no more; I was never in such a confounded pickle since I was born."-" Sirrah,” replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom in our family, never to stir abroad against an enemy, I should come and teach you better manners.' "I pray have patience," said the bee, or you 'll spend your substance, and for aught I see, you may stand in need of it all, toward the repair of your house."—" Rogue, rogue," replied the spider, 'yet methinks you should have more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much your betters."-"By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will amount to a very good jest; and you will do me a favour to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute." At this the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of controversy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous and angry; to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to the answers or objections of his opposite; and fully predetermined in his mind against all conviction.

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"Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person."

"I am glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant at least that I am come honestly by my wings and my voice; for then, it seems, I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my music; and Providence would never have bestowed on me two such gifts, without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit indeed all the flowers and blossoms of the field | and garden; but whatever I collect thence enriches myself, without the least injury to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. Now, for you and your skill in architecture and other mathematics, I have little to say: in that building of yours there might, for aught I know, have been labour and method enough; but, by woful experience for us both, it is too plain the materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, and consider duration and matter, as well as method and art. You boast indeed of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store