A schoolboy next, and when my growing mind Could seek enjoyments proper to its kind,

I loved thee, Shakespere! more than youthful play,
Green fields, rude mountains, or companions gay ;-
Than flowers that bent beneath the wild bee's touch ;-
Than rivers where I bathed and that was much!
Oft when thy mirth my sorrows would beguile,
Or tears in turn wash off the sunny smile,

I fancied that the season of thy birth

With its own varying sweets embued the earth

That thou wert made of; and the close-linked sense
Had drawn its changeful temperament from thence ;
And thus thy genius, like thy natal hour,
Was April all-alternate sun and shower !—

Maturing years but ripened the delight
I took to read thee;-and as reason's sight
Waxed clearer, and experience had unfurled
The truth-stampt map of nature and the world,
I found thee skilful, deep, sagacious, true;
The same for ever, yet for ever new ;-

Thy book a breathing portrait of the mind:-
An index to the volume of mankind.

Thou wast-(O, pardon my presumptuous pride,
To call Thee so,) my friend, companion, guide,
That taught me the soul's mazes to explore,
To pierce the semblance, and dissect the core;
Of nature's forms the hidden spring to view,
And find their beauty and their moral too.
O, 'tis a study, noble and refined,

To search the fertile garden of thy mind ;-
Its-self a Paradise, like that whose flowers
Immortal fruits and never fading bowers,

First sprang, unmodel'd from the new formed earth,
Original, but perfect at their birth;

A prime creation; from whose pregnant roots

This after-world derives her trees, and flowers, and

fruits.

Thus hath thy wit creative wonders wrought,

Formed to new shapes the never-hacknied thought;

Original, yet ne'er to be surpassed,

Mature at once tho' through all time to last;

In whose rich volume, (all poetic ground,)

The noblest germs of thought and poesy are found!
In thee I saw the ever-varying line

Of beauty; and have learned what strains divine
From mortal lips may issue; yea, from thee,
Have heard a more than earthly melody.

-I well remember-'twas a summer's night— The breeze was fresh and cooling-the stars brightWhen from the casement, sounds 'till then unknown Fell on mine ear; at first, a dying tone Came trembling, fainting; 'till a gentle swell Upheld the strain-but how I could not tell.

A wilder, then, but melancholy sound,

And fanciful, charmed all the air around;

"Till strengthening from each fall and solemn close, The columned organ's pealing music rose!

It all seemed more than mortal-so sublime

"Twas like the produce of some heavenly clime; Fragments of sacred numbers, tuned above, When seraphs touch their lyres to hymns of love.

It was an air-harp; and its tender strings, Silent before, when brushed by Zephyr's wings, Uttered sweet sounds, such as the mellow flute Did never yield, nor often fingered lute; But uttered to the fitful breeze alone,

Should man but touch, the harmony were gone.—

And THOU seem'dst such a spiritual instrument, Where all the chords of melody were blent, Like colours in the rainbow.-Cramping art, Checked not the delicate movements of thy heart; And learning could not tune thee,—for thy tone Was waked by Nature's genial breath alone!

BOTTOM'S DREAM;

OR,

Ἡ τῶν Θεῶν Ἐκκλήσια.

"I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was The eye of man hath not heard; the ear of man hath not seen; man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince, to write a ballad of this dream; it shall be called "Bottom's Dream," because it hath no bottom."

SHAKESPERE.

PETER QUINCE, ADDRESSING THE STAGYRITE.

"SAY what are dreams?—or whence the dormant

skull

Awake, so plain, and logically dull,

Receives th' unlicensed mintage of conceit,

And takes for sterling coin, wit's counterfeit ?—