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When we enter'd the gut of Gibraltar,
I verily thought she'd have sunk ;
For the wind so began for to alter,

She yaw'd just as thof she was drunk.
The squall tore the mainsail to shivers,—
Helm a-weather, the hoarse boatswain cries;
Brace the foresail athwart, see she quivers,
As through the rude tempest she flies.

The storm came on thicker and faster,
As black just as pitch was the sky;
When truly a doleful disaster

Befel three poor sailors and I :

Ben Buntline, Sam Shroud, and Dick Handsail,
By a blast that came furious and hard,

Just while we were furling the mainsail,
Were every soul swept from the yard.

Poor Ben, Sam, and Dick cried Peccavi;
As for I, at the risk of my neck,
While they sunk down in peace to old Davy,
Caught a rope and so landed on deck:

Well, what would you have? we were stranded,
And out of a fine jolly crew

Of three hundred that sail'd, never landed
But I, and I think twenty-two.

After thus we at sea had miscarried,
Another guess-way sat the wind;
For to England I came and got married,
To a lass that was comely and kind :
But whether for joy or vexation,

We know not for what we were born;
Perhaps I may find a kind station,

Perhaps I may touch at Cape Horn. For sailors were born for all weathers, Great guns let it blow high, blow low, Our duty keeps us to our tethers,

TOM BOWLING.

HERE, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of our crew;

No more he'll hear the tempest howling,
For death has broach'd him to.

His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful below he did his duty,
And now he's gone aloft.

Tom never from his word departed,
His virtues were so rare;

His friends were many, and true-hearted,
His Poll was kind and fair.

And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly,
Ah! many's the time and oft;
But mirth is turn'd to melancholy,
For Tom is gone aloft.

Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,
When He who all commands

Shall give, to call life's crew together,
The word to pipe all hands.

Thus death, who kings and tars dispatches,
In vain Tom's life has doff'd;

For though his body's under hatches,
His soul is gone aloft.

LOVELY NAN.

SWEET is the ship that under sail

Spreads her bosom to the gale:

Sweet, oh! sweet's the flowing can;

Sweet to poise the labouring oar,

That tugs us to our native shore,

When the boatswain pipes the barge to man :

Sweet sailing with a fav'rite breeze;

But, oh! much sweeter than all these,

Is Jack's delight,-his lovely Nan.

The needle, faithful to the north,
To shew of constancy the worth,
A curious lesson teaches man ;
The needle, time may rust,-a squall
Capsize the binnacle and all,

Let seamanship do all it can :
My love in worth shall higher rise,—
Nor time shall rust, nor squalls capsize
My faith and truth to lovely Nan.

When in the bilboes I was penn'd,
For serving of a worthless friend,
And ev'ry creature from me ran ;
No ship, performing quarantine,
Was ever so deserted seen;

None hailed me,-woman, child, nor man: But though false friendship's sails were furl'd, Though cut adrift by all the world,

I'd all the world in lovely Nan.

I love my duty, love my friend,
Love truth and merit to defend,-

To mourn their loss who hazard ran ;
I love to take an honest part,
Love beauty and a spotless heart,—

By manners love to show the man : To sail through life by honour's breeze, "Twas all along of loving these

First made me doat on lovely Nan.

BLOW HIGH, BLOW LOW.

BLOW high, blow low, let tempests tear
The main-mast by the board;

My heart, with thoughts of thee, my dear,
And love well stor'd,

Shall brave all danger, scorn all fear,

The roaring winds, the raging sea,

In hopes on shore,

To be once more

Aloft, while mountains high we go,
The whistling winds that scud along,
And the surge roaring from below,
Shall my signal be

To think on thee,

And this shall be my song,—

Blow high, blow low, &c.

And on that night, when all the crew

The mem'ry of their former lives

O'er flowing cans of flip renew,

And drink their sweethearts and their wives,
I'll heave a sigh, and think on thee;
And as the ship rolls through the sea,
The burthen of my song shall be,—
Blow high, blow low, &c.

BOLD JACK.

WHILE up the shrouds the sailor goes,
Or ventures on the yard;

The landsman, who no better knows,
Believes his lot is hard.

Bold Jack, with smiles, each danger meets,

Casts anchor, heaves the log,

Trims all the sails, belays the sheets,

And drinks his can of

grog.

When mountains high the waves that swell

The vessel rudely bear,

Now sinking in a hollow dell,

Now quivering in the air:

Bold Jack, with smiles, &c.

When waves 'gainst rocks and quicksands roar,

You ne'er hear him repine;

Freezing near Greenland's icy shore,

Or burning near the line:

Bold Jack, with smiles, &c.

If to engage they give the word,

To quarters all repair;

While splinter'd masts go by the board,

And shot sing through the air :

Bold Jack, with smiles, &c.

JOANNA BAILLIE is a native of Scotland, and of noble Scottish descent; but the greater part of her life has been spent in London. She resides at Hampstead; and has remained unmarried. No living writer has received from contemporaries higher tokens of admiration and respect; and her genius has been largely and generally appreciated by the public. As a lyric Poet, she cannot be said to occupy a prominent station; but she has achieved that which must be considered the loftiest effort of the mind:-her "Tragedies" will be classed among the most admirable in the English language. Mr. Hazlitt, in some MS. notes upon the productions of Miss Baillie, of which we shall make liberal use, objects to her "Plays of the Passions," on the ground that they have not been acted, and may not be acted: "they are only," he adds, "chef-d'œuvres for the closet." They are elegant, classical, stately, with occasional touches (and some of them fine ones) of nature and passion; but her tragedy, with every advantage of taste and study, has the port and flexure of female genius. She has not UNSEXED the Muse! There is excessive decorum, refinement, skill: we have a graceful and expanded commentary on nature; not the naked, unadorned, and rugged text itself. The bosom is seldom probed, the brain rarely maddened. There is so much methodical preparation for the catastrophe, with so many softening gradations interposed, so much temperance assumed to give smoothness,' to the effect, that we scarce feel the struggle when it comes; there is so much good sense, and calm reflection, and elegant declamation put into the mouths of the speakers, that passion is swallowed up in sentiment, and we begin to be as philosophical as themselves: instead of the lightning and the dread thunderstroke issuing from the dark cloud, we perceive only a soft, glittering vapour of words; and are, as it were, suspended on the edge of a precipice, instead of being hurled down it,-in a word, tragedy here utters chiefly muffled sounds, has her agonised features thinly but gracefully veiled, and, for the bleeding wounds and mangled fibres of the heart, we are shown the learned prescriptions and gauze bandages that have been applied with a skilful and tender hand to assuage and heal them. The authoress of a Series of Plays,' assumes the part of a charitable or guardian angel, that foresees disasters, suggests reflections, and proposes remedies,-not that of the destroying demon, that tears off every disguise of evil, cuts off hope, drives passion to frenzy, and makes this world a hell, from which there is no resource but in the silent grave. Her style is a little effeminate; her plan is somewhat pedantic. When you expect her to touch the goal of perfection (and she is frequently near it), she suddenly falters, and turns aside from want of resolution to seize the golden prize; some trifling scruple impedes her course-some idle ornament diverts her attention; she expands a simple interjection into a lecture, or tacks a system to a common incident, till, between the grandeur of the design and the littleness of the means, she almost unavoidably fails of natural and striking effect. 'Fear and niceness, the handmaids of

all women, or, rather, woman its pretty self,' may be said to ruin the tragic Poet. So far from precipitating the tide of passion, and letting it boil and rage in the troubled gulph below, she dallies, she tampers with it, tries to keep it back, and make it play in gentle eddies, or strains it through artificial sluices to form fairy cascades and jetsd'eaux, to display the rainbow hues of fancy, or drains it to overflow the neighbouring plains and fertilize the fields of reflection. This is but natural. Women in their writings are beset with doubts, and hampered with difficulties, and dare not take a decisive step, any more than in real life. Neither are women taught to give way to, or express, their passions, but to do all they can to suppress and conceal them. A tragic author must speak out;-a woman is sworn to secresy and silence. Action and passion (both of them forbidden ground) being then the chief ingredients of tragedy, a female author in attempting it must be hard beset. Nay, farther, women are generally taught not only not to harbour or give utterance to the fiercer passions in their own breasts, but not to witness the outward signs of them, or sympathise with their inward workings in others. They turn from the subject with shrinking sensitiveness, and consider whatever shocks their delicacy as a crime. This reserve and caution is an excellent discipline of manners and virtue,-but a bad school for imagination and passion. Is it to be wondered at that we find in these plays, by one inured from her childhood to the severest lessons of prudence and propriety, instances of refinement verging on imbecility, and of casuistry substituted for the unvarnished

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