MALHERBE'S OPINION OF POETS.

THIS celebrated French versifier used wittily to observe of poets, that their usefulness in a State was about equivalent to good skittleplayers.

RICHARD FLECKNOE.

FLECKNOE has these excellent lines addressed to a miser:

"Money's like muck, that's profitable while
'T serves for manuring of some fruitful soil;
But on a barren one, like thee, methinks,
"Tis like a dunghill that lies still and stinks."

What was the cause of Dryden's enmity to this poor author? So far from having provoked it, Flecknoe has even written an epigram in his praise. This tribute, and his religion (for he was a Catholic), it might have been thought, would have saved him. Perhaps Dryden was offended at his invectives against the obscenity of the stage, feeling himself more notorious, if not more culpable, than any of his rivals, for this scandalous and unpardonable offence.

Flecknoe is by no means the despicable writer

that we might suppose him to be, from the niche in which his mighty enemy has placed him.

Be the other merits of his verses what they

may, he has this rare merit (if the little volume of his Epigrams may be considered as a sample of his other works), that he is never, in the slightest degree, an immoral writer himself, and that he expresses a due ab-. horrence of the mischievous and disgraceful writings of his contemporaries.

This is from his divine epigrams.

"Do good with pain, the pleasure in't you find,
The pain's soon past, the good remains behind:
Do ill with pleasure, this y'ave for your pains,
The pleasure passes soon, the ill remains."

To a lady, too confident of her innocence, he says,

"Madam, that you are innocent, I know,

But the world wants innocence to think you so."

Here is the germ of a well-known epigram

"Shepherd. Since you are resolv'd, farewell,
Look you lead not apes in hell.

"Nymph. Better lead apes thither, than
Thither to be led by men."

I will add one quotation more: it is from an invocation to Silence:

"Sacred Silence, thou that art

Flood-gate of the deepest heart,

Offspring of a heavenly kind,

Frost of the mouth, and thaw of the mind,"
Admiration's readiest tongue."

He says, in the epistle dedicatory to his noble friends, "There is none prints more, nor publishes less than I; for I print only for myself and private friends." This volume, however, he made public, because he thought it more passable than the rest. "I write chiefly to avoid idleness, and print to avoid the imputation; and as others do it to live after they are dead, I do it only not to be thought dead whilst I can live. Epigram, in general, is a quick and short kind of writing, rather a slight than any great force of the spirit; and, therefore, the more fit for me, who love not to take pains in any thing, and rather affect a little negligence than too great curiosity. For these here, they are chiefly in praise of worthy persons, of which, none ever had a more plentiful supply than I, having been always conversant with the best

123

and worthiest in all places where I came; and, amongst the rest, with ladies, in whose conversation, as in an academy of virtue, I learnt nothing but goodness, saw nothing but nobleness; and one might as well be drunk in crystal fountain, as have any evil thought whilst they were in their company, which I shall gladly always remember as the happiest and innocentest part of all my life."

Never stranger, he says, was more indebted than he to the Queen's father, Joam IV. of Portugal. It appears, that he had been in Brazil, by the title of one of his epigrams, "On his Arara, drowned in his return from Brazil." Had he written travels instead of verses, he might have secured for himself a lasting and respectful remembrance. It is a vexatious thought, that the man who possessed knowledge, by which you might have been benefited, and for which you would have been thankful, should have employed his time in producing poems for which nobody cares.

Of the man who has given name to such a satire as "Macfleckno," these notices, trifling as they are, will not be thought wholly worthless.

SOUTHEY.

RUDEKI, THE PERSIAN POET.

RUDEKI was born in Maveralmaher, and blind from his birth; but of so acute a genius and intelligent a mind, that, at eight years of age, he retained the Koran completely in his memory. He made a rapid progress in learning, and early began to compose verses; and, as his voice was remarkably sweet, he studied music, and learned to play on the harp, in which he became a great proficient. He was bred in the court of Nasser Ben Ahmed Samani, where he had two hundred slaves, and four hundred camels, to carry his baggage.

No poet after Rudeki obtained such wealth and honours: his poems, if authors are to be credited, amounted to a hundred volumes. In the treatise entitled Yamini, his verses are said to amount to one million and three hundred.

The following is a fragment in praise of wine: the translation is by the late Dr. John Leyden. "He who my brimming cup shall view

In trembling radiance shine,

Shall own the ruby's brilliant hue

Is match'd by rosy wine.

Each is a gem from Nature's hand

In living lustre bright,