Imatges de pàgina
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You all know of John Milton as the author of Paradise Lost, of Comus, and of the Hymn on the Nativity. These are the works that have made him famous, but they were not written easily. They were the fruit of labour and intense study, which, he says, I take to be my portion in this life. From his early youth he determined to prepare himself so that I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.

How did he prepare himself? By industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs: not by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases.

Passages Chiefly Descriptive.

DESCRIPTION is the great test of a poet's imagination, and always distinguishes an original from a second-rate genius. To a writer of the inferior class, Nature, when at any time he attempts to describe it, appears exhausted by those who have gone before him in the same track. He sees nothing new or peculiar in the object which he would paint; his conceptions of it are loose and vague; and his expressions, of course, feeble and general. He gives us words rather than ideas; we meet with the language indeed of Poetical Description, but we apprehend the object described very indistinctly. Whereas a true poet makes us imagine that we see it before our eyes; he catches the distinguishing features; he gives it the colours of life and reality; he places it in such a light that a painter could copy after him. This happy talent is chiefly owing to a strong imagination, which first receives a lively impression of the object; and then, by employing a proper selection of circumstances in describing it, transmits that impression in its full force to the imagination of others.

Hugh Blair.

It is not riming and versing that maketh a poet, no more then a long gowne maketh an Aduocate: who though he pleaded in armor should be an Aduocate and no Souldier. But it is that fayning notable images of vertues, vices, or what els, with that delightfull teaching which must be the right describing note to know a Poet by.

Sir Philip Sidney.

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To my true king I offered, free from stain, Courage and faith: vain faith, and courage vain. For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away, And one dear hope, that was more prized than they. For him I languished in a foreign clime, Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime; Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees, And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees; 1 Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep,Each morning started from the dream to weep;

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Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave

The resting-place I asked, an early grave.

Oh! thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,

By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

Lord Macaulay.

II.

ROYAL TOMBS.*

THE burial-places of kings are always famous. The oldest and greatest buildings on the earth are Tombs of Kings-the Pyramids. The most wonderful revelation of the life of the ancient world is that which is painted in the rock-hewn catacombs of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, at Thebes.1 The burial of the Kings of Judah was a kind of canonization. In the vision of "all the kings of the nations, lying in glory, every one in his own house," the ancient prophets saw the august image of the nether world.

These burial-places, however, according to the universal practice of antiquity, were mostly outside the precincts of the towns. The sepulchre of the race of David, within the city of Jerusalem, formed a solitary exception, The Roman Emperors were interred first in the mausoleum 2 of Augustus, in the Campus Martius, beyond the walls-then in the mausoleum of Hadrian, on the farther side of the Tiber. The burial of Geta at the foot of the Palatine, and of Trajan at the base of his Column, in the Forum which bears his name, were the first indications that the sanctity of the city might be invaded by the presence of imperial graves. It was reserved for Constantine to give

* From Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey.

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