ter there is an observation which seems to hint that Darwin had some sinister design in the order of his publication of the Botanic Garden ;-" For some reason inscrutable to me, he publishes the second part first." Is it possible that he could have acted under the impression, that Miss Seward might not live to see the first part, and to claim her share of it? We would not willingly believe it. We forget what were Darwin's avowed reasons for not beginning the publication of his work with the first part. The next mention that Miss Seward makes of the matter is in a letter to Mr. Jackson, dated August, 1792, the same year in which the first part of the Botanic Garden was published ;-" He (Doctor Darwin) retains without the least acknowledgment, not even the quotation marks, and places, as the exordium of this his resplendent poem, a copy of verses of mine which I wrote in his Botanic Garden, near Lichfield, in the year 1779, when he himself was an inhabitant of Lichfield.- -My verses had the honour of suggesting to the Doctor the first idea of this exquisite composition." She repeats the same complaint to Mr. Thomas Park, in a letter dated 1801, the year before Darwin died. After this what are we to think of Campbell's assertion, that she had never the courage to make this pretension during Doctor Darwin's life? The verses in question, though upon the whole amongst her happiest efforts, are not so superior even to her worst performances as to excite any suspicion on the ground of incapacity. There are two or three of her other pieces that are quite equal to them, and in the same

style. The following description of the

sea round the North

Pole, in her Elegy on Captain Cook, though not without its

faults, was honored with the praise of Dr. Johnson:

"From the rude summit of yon frozen steep,

Contrasting Glory gilds the dreary deep!

Lo!-deck'd with vermil youth and beamy grace,

Hope in her step, and gladness in her face,
Light on the icy rock, with outstretch'd hands,

The Goddess of the new Columbus stands.

Round her bright head the plumy peterels soar,
Blue as her robe, that sweeps the frozen shore;
Glows her soft cheek, as vernal mornings fair,
And warm as summer-suns her golden hair;
O'er the hoar waste her radiant glances stream,
And courage kindles in their magic beam.
She points the ship its mazy path, to thread
The floating fragments of the frozen bed.
While o'er the deep, in many a dreadful form,
The giant Danger howls along the storm.
Furling the iron sails with numbed hands,
Firm on the deck the great Adventurer stands ;
Round glitt'ring mountains hears the billows rave,
And the vast ruin thunder on the wave.-
Appall'd he hears !-but checks the rising sigh,
And turns on his firm band a glist'ning eye.—
Not for himself the sighs unbidden break,
Amid the terrors of the icy wreck;
Not for himself starts the impassion'd tear,
Congealing as it falls ;-nor pain, nor fear,
Nor Death's dread darts, impede the great design,
Till Nature draws the circumscribing line.

Huge rocks of ice th' arrested ship embay,

And bar the gallant Wanderer's dangerous way.-
His eye regretful marks the Goddess turn

The assiduous prow from its relentless bourn."

Miss Seward speaks in a very gentle tone of Dr. Darwin's alterations of the lines he stole from her; though he has by no means improved them. They remind us of Sir Fretful Plagiary's amusing simile" Steal! to be sure they may; and egad serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children, disfigure them to make them pass for their own." The following really beautiful lines were undoubtedly injured by Dr. Darwin's alterations.

"To charm thine eye, amid the crystal tide
With sinuous track, my silvery nations glide;
My choral birds their vivid plumes unfold,
And insect armies wave their wings of gold."

Anna Seward.

"On twinkling fins my pearly nations play,
Or win with sinuous train their trackless way.
My plumy pairs, in gay embroidery dressed
Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest."

Dr. Darwin.

We shall now give the stolen verses in the state in which they were circulated by the author, and before they were altered by Darwin to suit his purpose. They are very descriptive, animated and harmonious.

66 VERSES WRITTEN IN DR. DARWIN'S BOTANIC GARDEN,

near Lichfield, July, 1778.

"O, come not here, ye proud, whose breasts enfold
Th' insatiate wish of glory, or of gold!

O come not here, whose brauded foreheads wear

The eternal frown of envy or of care!

For you no Dryad decks her fragrant bowers,
For you her sparkling urn no Naiad pours;
Unmark'd by you, light Graces skim the green,
And hovering Cupids aim their shafts unseen.

But thou, whose mind the well-attemper'd ray
Of taste and virtue lights with purer day;
Whose finer sense each soft vibration owns,
Mute and unfeeling to discordant tones;
Like the fair flower, that spreads its lucid form
To meet the sun, but shuts it to the storm;
For thee my borders nurse the glowing wreath,
My fountains murmur and my zephyrs breathe;
To charm thine eye, amid the crystal tide,
With sinuous track, my silvery nations glide;
My choral birds their vivid plumes unfold,

And insect armies wave their wings of gold.
And if with thee some gentle maid should stray,
Disastrous Love companion of her way,

O! lead her timid step to yonder glade,

Whose arching rock incumbent alders shade!

These, as meek evening wakes the temperate breeze,
And moon-beams glimmer thro' the trembling trees,

The rills that gurgle round shall sooth her ear,
The weeping rock shall number tear for tear;

And as sad Philomel, alike forlorn,

Sings to the night, reclining on a thorn,
While at mute intervals each falling note

Sighs in the gale, and whispers round the grot,
The sister-woe shall calm her throbbing breast,
And softest slumbers steal her cares to rest.

Thus spoke the GENIUS, as he stept along,
And bade these lawns to Peace and Truth belong;
Down the steep slopes he led, with modest skill,
The grassy path-way, and the vagrant rill;
Stretch'd o'er the marshy vale the willowy mound,
Where shines the lake amid the cultur'd ground;
Rear'd the young woodland, smooth'd the wavy green,
And gave to BEAUTY all the quiet scene.

O! may no ruder step the bowers prophane,
No midnight wassailer deface the plain !
And when the tempests of the wintry day
Blow golden autumn's varied leaves away,
Winds of the North, restrain your icy gales,

Nor chill the bosom of these HAPPY VALES !"

To account for the Doctor's conduct, every way unworthy of him, is not a very easy task. Perhaps he thought that if any complaint were made to him, he should be able to laugh it off as a pleasant joke. That he had not a very delicate sense of honor in such matters one of Miss Seward's anecdotes sufficiently demonstrates. When Mr. Mundy had finished his poem of " Needwood Forest," the Doctor wrote three little poetic compliments on the work. To the best he put his son's initials, to the second-best his own, and to the worst Miss Seward's! When the lady saw them in print at the conclusion of Mr. Mundy's poem, not liking the manœuvre, she reproached the Doctor with it. "He laughed it off," she says, “in a manner peculiar to himself, and with which he carries all his points of despotism." This anecdote was given to a literary correspondent at a time when, if it had not been true, it was likely enough to be contradicted by the Doctor or his friends. The Edinburgh Review, in noticing the life of Darwin, (in any thing

but a complimentary or friendly tone,) acknowledged that the correctness of her statement respecting the adoption of her lines as an introduction to the first Canto of the Botanic Garden is placed beyond a doubt. Even the mild and cautious Walter Scott says, that Darwin's disingenuous suppression of the aid of which he had availed himself, must remain a considerable stain upon the character of the Poet of Flora.

Miss Seward's letters are the most artificial epistolary compositions in the language. They are sometimes ludicrously inflated. They are rarely, however, obscure or dull. They teem with highly interesting literary anecdotes and very ingenious criticisms on poetry. If the criticisms, when influenced by personal partialities, are too laudatory, it is an error that leans to virtue's side. She was an enthusiast in friendship, and appears to have taken as intense an interest in the success of her numerous poetical friends as in her own. Her character in this point of view is quite admirable. She had not the slightest taint of envy in her nature, and had such a generous admiration of intellectual eminence, that she could take the most profound and fervid delight in the productions of those whom she personally disliked or, who had seriously injured her. Thus she is perpetually dilating upon the greatness of Dr. Johnson's genius, though she abhorred the man. Darwin's conduct towards herself never checked in the least her warm admiration of his genius, and she seizes every opportunity of offering his Muse a glowing tribute of applause. An ill-natured critic might find a feast of faults in her six volumes of letters, and yet they are not only highly entertaining on account of the literary anecdotes and ingenious criticisms on poetry with which they abound, but they charm us with so many traits of a delicate mind and a feeling heart, that we allude to the imperfections of her style and her occasional errors with something like that reluctance with which we admit the defects of a personal friend. Mudford, in his Life of Cumberland, attacks her with savage bitterness, in return for an