ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE. TO THE MARCH IN SCIPIO. TOLL for the brave! The brave that are no more! Eight hundred of the brave, And laid her on her side. A land-breeze shook the shrouds, Brave Kempenfelt is gone; It was not in the battle; No tempest gave the shock; His sword was in its sheath; Weigh the vessel up, Once dreaded by our foes! And mingle with our cup The tear that England owes. Her timbers yet are sound, And she may float again, Full charged with England's thunder, And plough the distant main ⚫. But Kempenfelt is gone, His victories are o'er; Shall plough the wave no more. YARDLEY OAK. SURVIVOR Sole, and hardly such, of all [* Cowper wrote this very noble poem to induce Government to the attempt of weighing up poor Kempenfelt's vessel. If song could have induced men to the trial, this surely should have had the effect. The Royal George has been weighed up since the poet wrote, by the ingenuity of Colonel Pasley, but in a less noble way.] It seems idolatry with some excuse, When our forefather Druids in their oaks Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet Unpurified by an authentic act Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine, I Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled. Thou wast a bauble once, a cup and ball Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay, Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin'd The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs, And all thine embryo vastness, at a gulp. But Fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains Beneath thy parent tree mellow'd the soil Design'd thy cradle; and a skipping deer, With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared The soft receptacle, in which, secure, Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through. So Fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can, Ye reas'ners broad awake, whose busy search Of argument, employ'd too oft amiss, Sifts half the pleasures of short life away! Thou fell'st mature; and, in the loamy clod Swelling with vegetative force instinct, Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins, Now stars; two lobes, protruding, pair'd exact; A leaf succeeded, and another leaf, And, all the elements thy puny growth Fost'ring propitious, thou becamest a twig. Who lived when thou wast such! Oh, couldst thou speak, As in Dodona once thy kindred trees By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, And Time hath made thee what thou art—a cave (Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing While thus through all the stages thou hast push'd Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass; Then twig; then sapling; and, as cent'ry roll'd Slow after century, a giant-bulk Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion'd root Upheaved above the soil, and sides emboss'd With prominent wens globose-till at the last The rottenness, which time is charged to inflict On other mighty ones, found also thee. What exhibitions various hath the world Witness'd of mutability in all That we account most durable below! In all that live, plant, animal, and man, The force that agitates not unimpair'd ; Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence, Time was, when, settling on thy leaf, a fly Embowell'd now, and of thy ancient self Stands now, and semblance only of itself! Thine arms have left thee. Winds have rent them off Long since; and rovers of the forest wild [left With bow and shaft, have burnt them. Some have A splinter'd stump bleach'd to a snowy white; And some, memorial none where once they grew. Yet life still lingers in thee, and puts forth But since, although well qualified by age One man alone, the father of us all, TO MARY ‡. THE twentieth year is well nigh past, Thy spirits have a fainter flow, Thy needles, once a shining store, For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil [t Cowper never bestowed more labour on any of his compositions than upon the "Yardley Oak;" nor did he ever labour more successfully.-SOUTHEY, Life of Cowper, vol. iii. p. 17.] [ About this time it was that he addressed to her (Mrs. Unwin) one of the most touching, and certainly the most widely-known, of all his poems, for it has been read by thousands who have never perused " The Task." nor perhaps seen or heard of any other of his worksSOUTHEY, Life of Cowper, vol. iii. p. 150.] LINES ON HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE. O THAT those lips had language! Life has pass'd O welcome guest, though unexpected here! I will obey, not willingly alone, But gladly, as the precept were her own: My mother! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, I learn'd at last submission to my lot, But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more, Children not thine have trod my nurs'ry floor; And where the gard'ner Robin, day by day, Drew me to school along the public way, Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapp'd In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet-capt, 'Tis now become a history little known, That once we call'd the past'ral house our own. Short-lived possession! but the record fair, That mem'ry keeps of all thy kindness there, Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced A thousand other themes less deeply traced. Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid; Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd: Not scorn'd in Heav'n, though little noticed here. I prick'd them into paper with a pin, Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast There sits quiescent on the floods, that show Where tempests never beat nor billows roar," And thy loved consort on the dang❜rous tide Of life long since has anchor'd by thy side. But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, Always from port withheld, always distress'd— Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-toss'd, Sails ripp'd, seams op'ning wide, and compass lost, And day by day some current's thwarting force Sets me more distant from a prosp'rous course. Yet O the thought that thou art safe, and be! That thought is joy, arrive what may to me. My boast is not, that I deduce my birth From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth; But higher far my proud pretensions riseThe son of parents pass'd into the skies. And now, farewell-Time unrevoked has run His wonted course, yet what I wish'd is done. By contemplation's help, not sought in vain, I seem t' have lived my childhood o'er again; To have renew'd the joys that once were mine, Without the sin of violating thine; And, while the wings of Fancy still are free, And I can view this mimic show of thee, Time has but half succeeded in his theftThyself removed, thy power to soothe me left. ERASMUS DARWIN. [Born, 1732. Died, 1802.] ERASMUS DARWIN was born at Elton, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, where his father was a private gentleman. He studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and took the degree of bachelor in medicine; after which, he went to Edinburgh, to finish his medical studies. Having taken a physician's degree at that university, he settled in his profession at Litchfield; and, by a bold and successful display of his skill in one of the first cases to which he was called, established his practice and reputation. About a year after his arrival, he married a Miss Howard, the daughter of a respectable inhabitant of Litchfield, and by that connexion strengthened his interest in the place. He was, in theory and practice, a rigid enemy to the use of wine, and of all intoxicating liquors; and, in the course of his practice, was regarded as a great promoter of temperate habits among the citizens: but he gave a singular instance of his departure from his own theory, within a few years after his arrival in the very place where he proved the apostle of sobriety. Having one day joined a few friends who were going on a water-party, he got so tipsy after a cold collation, that, on the boat approaching Nottingham, he jumped into the river, and swam ashore. The party called to the philosopher to return; but he walked on deliberately, in his wet clothes, till he reached the market-place of Nottingham, and was there found by his friend, an apothecary of the place, haranguing the town's-people on the benefit of fresh air, till he was persuaded by his friend to come to his house and shift his clothes. Dr. Darwin stammered habitually; but on this occa sion wine untied his tongue. In the prime of life, he had the misfortune to break the patella of his knee, in consequence of attempting to drive a carriage of his own Utopian contrivance, which upset at the first experiment. He lost his first wife, after thirteen years of domestic union. During his widowhood, Mrs. Pole, the wife of a Mr. Pole, of Redburn, in Derbyshire, brought her children to his house, to be cured of a poison, which they had taken in the shape of medicine, and, by his invitation, she continued with him till the young patients were perfectly cured. He was soon after called to attend the lady, at her own house, in a dangerous fever, and prescribed with more than a physician's interest in her fate. Not being invited to sleep in the house in the night after his arrival, he spent the hours till morning beneath a tree, opposite to her apartment, watching the passing and repassing lights. While the life which he so passionately loved was in danger, he paraphrased Petrarch's celebrated sonnet on the dream which predicted to him the death of Laura. Though less favoured by the muse than Petrarch, he was more fortunate in love. Mrs. Pole, on the demise of an aged partner, accepted Dr. Darwin's hand, in 1781; and, in compliance with her inclinations, he removed from Litchfield to practise at Derby. He had a family by his second wife, and continued in high professional reputation till his death, in 1802, which was occasioned by angina pectoris, the result of a sudden cold. Dr. Darwin was between forty and fifty before he began the principal poem by which he is known. Till then he had written only occasional verses, and of these he was not ostentatious, fearing that it might affect his medical reputation to be thought a poet. When his name as a physician had, however, been established, he ventured, in the year 1781, to publish the first part of his "Botanic Garden." Mrs. Anna Seward, in her life of Darwin, declares herself the authoress of the opening lines of the poem; but as she had never courage to make this pretension during Dr. Darwin's life, her veracity on the subject is exposed to suspicion. In 1789 and 1792, the second and third part of his botanic poem appeared. In 1793 and 1796, he published the first and second parts of his "Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life." In 1801, he published "Phytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening ;" and, about the same time, a small treatise on female education, which attracted little notice. After his death appeared his poem, "The Temple of Nature," a mere echo of the "Botanic Garden." Darwin was a materialist in poetry no less than in philosophy. In the latter, he attempts to build systems of vital sensibility on mere mechanical principles; and in the former, he paints everything to the mind's eye, as if the soul had no pleasure beyond the vivid conception of form, colour, and motion. Nothing makes poetry more lifeless than description by abstract terms and general qualities; but Darwin runs to the opposite extreme of prominently glaring circumstantial description, without shade, relief, or perspective. His celebrity rose and fell with unexampled rapidity. His poetry appeared at a time peculiarly favourable to innovation, and his attempt to wed poetry and science was a bold experiment, which had some apparent sanction from the triumphs of modern discovery. When Lucretius wrote, science was in her cradle; but modern philosophy had revealed truths in nature more sublime than the marvels of fiction. The Rosicrucian machinery of his poem had, at the first glance, an imposing appearance, and the variety of his allusion was surprising. On a closer view, it was observable that the Botanic goddess, and her Sylphs and Gnomes, were useless, from their having no employment; and tiresome, from being the mere pretexts for declamation. The variety of allusion is very whimsical. Dr. Franklin is compared to Cupid; whilst Hercules, Lady Melbourne, Emma Crewe, Brindley's canals, and sleeping cherubs, sweep on like images in a dream. Tribes and grasses are likened to angels, and the truffle is rehearsed as a subterranean empress. His laborious ingenuity in finding comparisons is frequently like that of Hervey in his "Meditations," or of Flavel in his "Gardening Spiritualized." If Darwin, however, was not a good poet, it may be owned that he is frequently a bold personifier, and that some of his insulated passages are musical and picturesque. His Botanic Garden once pleased many better judges than his affected biographer, Anna Seward; it fascinated even the taste of Cowper, who says, in conjunction with Hayley, "We, therefore pleased, extol thy song, And deem the bard, whoe'er he be, That will not weave a wreath for thee, |