Yet, haply, on the printed page received,
The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed
As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air
Of memory, or see the light of love.1

Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend,
But more in show than truth;* and from the fields,
And from the mountains, to thy rural grave
Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er
Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers;
And taking up a voice shall speak (tho' still
Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity

Which words less free presumed not even to touch)
Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp
From infancy, through manhood, to the last
Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour,
Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined 2
Within thy bosom.

From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart

This tribute flow'd, with hope that it might guard
The dust of him whose virtues call'd it forth;

But 'tis a little space of earth that man,
Stretch'd out in death, is doom'd to occupy;
Still smaller space doth modest custom yield,
On sculptured tomb or tablet, to the claims
Of the deceased, or rights of the bereft.
'Tis well; and tho', the record overstepped
Those narrow bounds, yet on the printed page
Received, there may it stand, I trust, unblamed
As long as verse of mine shall steal from tears
Their bitterness, or live to shed a gleam
Of solace over one dejected thought.

In privately printed edition.

Burned, and with ever-strengthening light, enshrined

66

Privately printed edition

* Lamb's indifference to the country was a sort of 'mock apparel,' in which it was his humour at times to invest himself."-H. N. Coleridge, Supplement to the Biographia Literaria, p. 333.—ED.

'Wonderful' hath been

The love established between man and man,
'Passing the love of women;' and between
Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined
Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love
Without whose blissful influence Paradise
Had been no Paradise; and earth were now
A waste where creatures bearing human form,
Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear,
Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on;
And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve
That he hath been an Elm without his Vine,

And her bright dower of clustering charities,

That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung
Enriching and adorning. Unto thee,

Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee
Was given (say rather thou of later birth
Wert given to her) a Sister-'tis a word
Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek,
The self-restraining, and the ever-kind;
In whom thy reason and intelligent heart
Found-for all interests, hopes, and tender cares,
All softening, humanising, hallowing powers,
Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought-
More than sufficient recompence!

Her love

(What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?) Was as the love of mothers; and when years,

Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called

The long-protected to assume the part

Of a protector, the first filial tie

Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight,
Remained imperishably interwoven

With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting world,

Did they together testify of time 1

And season's difference-a double tree

With two collateral stems sprung from one root;
Such were they-such thro' life they might have been
In union, in partition only such;

Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High;
Yet, thro' all visitations and all trials,

Still they were faithful; like to vessels launched
From the same beach one ocean to explore 2
With mutual help, and sailing-to their league
True, as inexorable winds, or bars

Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow.*

But turn we rather, let my spirit turn
With thine, O silent and invisible Friend!
To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief,
When reunited, and by choice withdrawn
From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught
That the remembrance of foregone distress,
And the worse fear of future ill (which oft
Doth hang around it, as a sickly child
Upon its mother) may be both alike
Disarmed of power to unsettle present good
So prized, and things inward and outward held
In such an even balance, that the heart
Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels,
And in its depth of gratitude is still.

Compare the testimony borne to Mary Lamb by Mr Proctor, and by Henry Crabb Robinson.-ED.

O gift divine of quiet sequestration!

The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise,
And feeding daily on the hope of heaven,

Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves
To life-long singleness; but happier far

Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others,
A thousand times more beautiful appeared,

Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie

Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds1
His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead

To the blest world where parting is unknown.

[These verses were written extempore, immediately after reading a notice of the Ettrick Shepherd's death, in the Newcastle paper, to the Editor of which I sent a copy for publication. The persons lamented in these verses were all either of my friends or acquaintance. In Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, an account is given of my first meeting with him in 1803. How the Ettrick Shepherd and I became known to each other has already been mentioned in these notes. He was undoubtedly a man of original genius, but of coarse manners and low and offensive opinions. Of Coleridge and Lamb I need not speak here. Crabbe I have met in London at Mr Rogers's, but more frequently and favourably at Mr Hoare's upon Hampstead Heath. Every spring he used to pay that family a visit of some length, and was upon terms of intimate friendship with Mrs Hoare, and still more with her daughter-in-law, who has a large collection of his letters addressed to herself. After the Poet's decease, application was made to her to give up these letters to his biographer, that they, or at least part of them, might be given to the public. She hesitated to comply, and asked my opinion on the subject. "By no means," was my answer, grounded not upon any objection there might be to publishing

a selection from these letters, but from an aversion I have always felt to meet idle curiosity by calling back the recently departed to become the object of trivial and familiar gossip. Crabbe obviously for the most part preferred the company of women to that of men, for this among other reasons, that he did not like to be put upon the stretch in general conversation: accordingly in miscellaneous society his talk was so much below what might have been expected from a man so deservedly celebrated, that to me it seemed trifling. It must upon other occasions have been of a different character, as I found in our rambles together on Hampstead Heath, and not so much from a readiness to communicate his knowledge of life and manners as of natural history in all its branches. His mind was inquisitive, and he seems to have taken refuge from the remembrance of the distresses he had gone through, in these studies and the employments to which they led. Moreover, such contemplations might tend profitably to counterbalance the painful truths which he had collected from his intercourse with mankind. Had I been more intimate with him, I should have ventured to touch upon his office as a minister of the Gospel, and how far his heart and soul were in it so as to make him a zealous and diligent labourer: in poetry, though he wrote much as we all know, he assuredly was not so. I happened once to speak of pains as necessary to produce merit of a certain kind which I highly valued : his observation was-" "It is not worth while." You are quite right, thought I, if the labour encroaches upon the time due to teach truth as a steward of the mysteries of God: if there be cause to fear that, write less: but, if poetry is to be produced at all, make what you do produce as good as you can. Mr Rogers once told me that he expressed his regret to Crabbe that he wrote in his later works so much less correctly than in his earlier. "Yes," replied he, "but then I had a reputation to make; now I can afford to relax." Whether it was from a modest estimate of his own qualifications, or from causes less creditable, his motives for writing verse and his hopes and aims were not so high as is to be desired. After being silent for more than twenty years, he again applied himself to poetry, upon the spur of applause he received from the periodical publications of the day, as he himself tells us in one of his prefaces. Is it not to be lamented that a man who was so conversant with permanent truth, and whose writings are so valuable an acquisition to our country's literature, should have required an impulse from such a quarter? Mrs Hemans was unfortunate as a poetess in being obliged by circumstances to write for money, and that so frequently and so much, that she was compelled to look out for subjects wherever she could find them, and to write as expeditiously as possible. As a woman, she was to a considerable degree a spoilt child of the world. She had been early in life distinguished for talent, and poems of hers were published while she was a girl. She had also been handsome in her youth, but her education had been most