Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye: He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend; The Third Canto opens with the nymphs and heroes chattering in the palace at Hampton Court. One speaks the glory of the British Queen, Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat, Meanwhile, declining from the noon of day, The merchant from the Exchange returns in peace, And the long labours of the toilet cease. Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites, Burns to encounter two adventurous knights, At ombre singly to decide their doom; And swells her breast with conquests yet to come. Here follows a description of the game of ombre, under figure of a battle, in delightful imitation of a game of chess by Girolamo Vida, in one of his Latin poems. The turn of the game is raising exultation in the nymph, when coffee is brought in Coffee (which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes) Sent up in vapours to the Baron's brain New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain. Ah, cease, rash youth! Be warned by Scylla, whom the gods changed to a bird for plucking from the head of her father Nisus the one purple hair in which his fortune lay, and giving it to her lover Minos, who made war upon him. But when to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill! Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace A two-edged weapon from her shining case: So ladies in romance assist their knight, Present the spear, and arm him for the fight. He takes the gift with reverence, and extends The little engine on his fingers' ends; This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head. Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair, A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair; And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear; Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near. The Peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide, Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes, And screams of horror rend the affrighted skies. Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last; Or when rich China vessels, fallen from high, In glittering dust and painted fragments lie! She sighs for ever on her pensive bed, Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head. Two handmaids, Ill-Nature and Affectation, wait upon her throne, spectres are about it, and unnumbered throngs of bodies changed to various forms by Spleen : Here living teapots stand, one arm held out, Umbriel passed safely among all with a branch of healing spleenwort in his hand, and prayed of the goddess: "Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin, That single act gives half the world the spleen." Seems to reject him, though she grants his prayer. "O wretched maid!" she spread her hands, and cried, Her wrath uttered, and still raging, Belinda -to Sir Plume repairs, And bids her beau demand the precious hairs: Sir Plume could not move the triumphant Baron. But Umbriel, hateful Gnome! forbears not so; He breaks the vial whence the sorrows flow. Belinda passes now to tears and sighs. "What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam ? Oh, had I stayed, and said my prayers at home! 'Twas this the morning omens seemed to tell : 1 The reference is to Vulcan's walking tripods, in the 18th Book of Homer's "Iliad." 2 Strips of lead were then used for fixing and tightening the curlpapers. Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell; The Fifth Canto opens, in Clarissa's counsel, with a parody of Homer's speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus. She said the pitying audience melt in tears; "Say, why are beauties praised and honoured most, Why round our coaches crowd the white-gloved beaux ? Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day, Umbriel and the sprites-Umbriel from a sconce's height-look on delighted or assist the fray. One died in metaphor and one in song; one was killed by a frown, but revived by a smile. See fierce Belinda on the Baron flies, With more than usual lightning in her eyes: Nor feared the chief the unequal fight to try, Who sought no more than on his foe to die. THE BATTLE. From the Illustrations by L. Du Guernier to the Edition of 1714. But this bold lord, with manly strength endued, And burn in Cupid's flames,-but burn alive." "Restore the lock!" she cries; and all around But trust the Muse-she saw it upward rise, A sudden star, it shot through liquid air, And drew behind a radiant trail of hair. Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright, The heaven's bespangling with dishevelled light. The Sylphs behold it kindling as it flies, And, pleased, pursue its progress through the skies. This the blessed lover shall for Venus take, Then cease, bright nymph, to mourn thy ravished hair, THOMSON'S " CASTLE OF INDOLENCE." FORESHADOWINGS of the revival of a sense of nature among English poets were to be found already in 1726 when James Thomson began the publication of his "Seasons," and John Dyer published "Grongar Hill," both having been preceded, in 1725, by Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd." A revived interest in the poetry of Spenser was another sign of growing reaction against French critical rule. Shenstone's "Schoolmistress," in thirty or forty stanzas, first published in 1742, was a pleasant illustration of the 1 See in this Library, "Shorter English Poems," pages 361-365. taste for imitations of Spenser; but the best of all these imitations was James Thomson's "Castle of Indolence." Shenstone's imitation is weakened by very crude attempts at antique phrase, and it paints the active life of the village schoolmistress in a fine spirit of indolence. But in the two cantos of his "Castle of Indolence," each of about seventy-eight stanzas, James Thomson struck the deeper notes of life. The theme of the poem is Indolence, not as a good, but as an evil. To the Knight who represents the energies of life, the Castle of Indolence represents what the Gardens of Acrasia were to Guyon in the "Faerie Queene." The playful tone of the poem only quickens the sense of the underlying earnestness. Thomson imitates Spenser in the manner of a poet who has really felt and understood him, who has placed his hand in Spenser's and been led by the great master to higher ground. "The Castle of Indolence," published in 1748, the year of his death, is Thomson's best poem. He had been at work on it during the course of nearly fifteen years, beginning, it is said, with stanzas painting playfully his own idleness and that of his friends, and then developing it into a fine picture of the triumph of human energy in labour for the days to come. Of the two cantos the first represents the Castle of Indolence: The castle hight of Indolence, And its false luxury, Where, for a little time, alas! We lived right jollily. The second is devoted to The Knight of Arts and Industry, After an opening stanza that indicates the thought of the poem by suggesting that there is great reason for man's toil early and late, six stanzas, accumulating images of drowsy ease, represent the country round about the Castle. II. In lowly dale, fast by a river's side, With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round, Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found. Half prankt with spring, with summer half imbrowned, III. Was nought around but images of rest: Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between; And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kest, From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime, unnumbered glittering streamlets played, And hurléd every where their waters sheen; That, as they bickered through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made. IV. Joined to the prattle of the purling rills Were heard the lowing herds along the vale, And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills, And vacant shepherds piping in the dale; And, now and then, sweet Philomel would wail, Or stockdoves plain amid the forest deep, That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale; And still a coil the grasshopper did keep; Yet all these sounds yblent inclinéd all to sleep. V. Full in the passage of the vale, above, A sable, silent, solemn forest stood, Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move, Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro, The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow. VI. A pleasing land of drowsyhead it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, For ever flushing round a summer-sky: There eke the soft delights, that witchingly Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast; And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh; But whate'er smacked of noyance, or unrest, Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest. VII. The landscape such, inspiring perfect ease, Where Indolence (for so the wizard hight) Close-hid his castle mid embowering trees, That half shut out the beams of Phoebus bright, And made a kind of chequered day and night: Meanwhile, unceasing at the massy gate, Beneath a spacious palm, the wicked wight Was placed; and to his lute, of cruel fate And labour harsh, complained, lamenting man's estate. To this castle continual pilgrims came, allured by the freshness of its valley and the syren melody of the enchanter. IX. "Behold! ye pilgrims of this earth, behold! See all, but man, with unearned pleasure gay; See her bright robes the butterfly unfold, Broke from her wintry tomb in prime of May! What youthful bride can equal her array? Who can with her for easy pleasure vie? From mead to mead with gentle wing to stray, From flower to flower on balmy gales to fly, Is all she has to do beneath the radiant sky. X. "Behold the merry minstrels of the morn, |