'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more ;
I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you;
For morn is approaching, your charms to restore,
Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with
dew:

Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn;
Kind Nature the embryo blossom will save.
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn!
O when shall it dawn on the night of the grave!

'Twas thus, by the glare of false science betray'd, '
That leads, to bewilder; and dazzles, to blind;
My thoughts wont to roam, from shade onward to
shade,

Destruction before me, and sorrow behind.

O pity, great Father of Light,' then I cried, 'Thy creature, who fain would not wander from thee; Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride:

From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free!
-And darkness and doubt are now flying away,
No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn.

So breaks on the traveller, faint, and astray,
The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn.

See Truth, Love, and Mercy, in triumph descending,
And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom!
On the cold cheek of Death smiles and roses are
blending,

And Beauty immortal awakes from the tomb,'

ON THE REPORT OF A MONUMENT TO BE ERECTED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, TO THE MEMORY OF A LATE AUTHOR. (CHURCHILL.) (Written in 1765.)

[Part of a letter to a person of quality.]

-LEST your lordship, who are so well acquainted with every thing that relates to true honour, should think hardly of me for attacking the memory of the dead, I beg leave to offer a few words in my own vindication.

If I had composed the following verses with a view to gratify private resentment, to promote the interest of any faction, or to recommend myself to the patronage of any person whatsoever, I should have been altogether inexcusable. To attack the memory of the dead from selfish considerations, or from mere wantonness of malice, is an enormity which none can hold in greater detestation than I. But I composed them from very different motives; as every intelligent reader, who peruses them with attention, and who is willing to believe me upon my own testimony, will undoubtedly perceive. My motives proceeded from a sincere desire to do some small service to my country, and to the cause of truth and virtue. The promoters of faction I ever did, and ever will consider as the enemies of mankind: to the memory of such I owe no veneration: to the writings of such I owe no indulgence.

Your lordship knows that (Churchill) owed the greatest share of his renown to the most incompetent of all judges, the mob: actuated by the most unworthy of all principles, a spirit of insolence, and inflamed by the vilest of all human passions, hatred to their fellow citizens. Those who joined the cry in his favour seemed to me to be swayed rather by fashion than by real sentiment: he therefore might have lived and died unmolested by me, confident as I am, that posterity, when the present unhappy dissensions are forgotten, will do ample justice to his real character. But

when I saw the extravagant honours that were paid to his memory, and heard that a monument in Westminster Abbey was intended for one whom even his admirers acknowledge to have been an incendiary, and a debauchee, I could not help wishing that my countrymen would reflect a little on what they were doing, before they consecrated, by what posterity would think the public voice, a character, which no friend to virtue or true taste can approve. It was this sentiment, enforced by the earnest request of a friend, which produced the following little poem; in which I have said nothing of (Churchill's) manners that is not warranted by the best authority; nor of his writings, that is not perfectly agreeable to the opinion of many of the most competent judges in Britain.

(Aberdeen,) January, 1765.

BUFO, begone! with thee may faction's fire,
That hatch'd thy salamander-fame, expire.
Fame, dirty idol of the brainless crowd,

What half-made moon-calf can mistake for good!
Since shared by knaves of high and low degree-
Cromwell and Cataline; Guido Faux, and thee.
By nature uninspired, untaught by art,

With not one thought that breathes the feeling heart,
With not one offering vow'd to Virtue's shrine,
With not one pure unprostituted line;

Alike debauch'd in body, soul, and lays ;-
For pension'd censure, and for pension'd praise,
For ribaldry, for libels, lewdness, lies,

For blasphemy of all the good and wise :
Coarse violence in coarser doggrel writ,
Which bawling blackguards spell'd, and took for wit:
For conscience, honour, slighted, spurn'd, o'erthrown :
Lo, Bufo shines the minion of renown.

Is this the land that boasts a Milton's fire,
And magic Spenser's wildly warbling lyre!
The land that owns th' omnipotence of song,
When Shakspeare whirls the throbbing heart along?

The land, where Pope, with energy divine,
In one strong blaze bade wit and fancy shine!
Whose verse, by truth in virtue's triumph born,
Gave knaves to infamy, and fools to scorn;
Yet pure in manners, and in thought refined,
Whose life and lays adorn'd and bless'd mankind?
Is this the land, where Gray's unlabour'd art
Soothes, melts, alarms, and ravishes the heart :
While the lone wanderer's sweet complainings
flow

In simple majesty of manly woe:

Or while, sublime, on eagle-pinion driven,
He soars Pindaric heights, and sails the waste of
Heaven?

Is this the land, o'er Shenstone's recent urn
Where all the Loves and gentler Graces mourn?
And where, to crown the hoary bard of night
The Muses and the Virtues all unite?

Is this the land, where Akenside displays
The bold yet temperate flame of ancient days?
Like the rapt saget, in genius as in theme,
Whose hallow'd strain renown'd llyssus' stream:
Or him, the indignant bard, whose patriot ire,
Sublime in vengeance, smote the dreadful lyre:
For truth, for liberty, for virtue warm,

Whose mighty song unnerved a tyrant's arm,
Hush'd the rude roar of discord, rage, and lust,
And spurn'd licentious demagogues to dust.

Is this the queen of realms! the glorious isle,
Britannia, blest in Heaven's indulgent smile!
Guardian of truth, and patroness of art,
Nurse of th' undaunted soul, and generous heart!
Where, from a base unthankful world exiled,
Freedom exults to roam the careless wild :
Where taste to science every charm supplies,
And genius soars unbounded to the skies!
And shall a Bufo's most polluted name
Stain her bright tablet of untainted fame?
Shall his disgraceful name with theirs be join'd,
Who wish'd and wrought the welfare of their kind?

* Dr. Young.

+ Plato.

Alceus. See Akenside's Ode on Lyric Poetry.

His name accurst, who leagued with ****** and Hell,
Labour'd to rouse, with rude and murderous yell,
Discord the fiend, to toss rebellion's brand,
To whelm in rage and woe a guiltless land;
To frustrate wisdom's, virtue's noblest plan,
And triumph in the miseries of man.

Driveling and dull, when crawls the reptile Muse, Swoln from the sty, and rankling from the stews, With envy, spleen, and pestilence replete,

And gorged with dust she lick'd from Treason's feet:
Who once, like Satan, raised to Heaven her sight,
But turn'd abhorrent from the hated light :-
O'er such a Muse shall wreaths of glory bloom?
No-shame and execration be her doom.

Hard-fated Bufo! could not dulness save
Thy soul from sin, from infamy thy grave?
Blackmore and Quarles, those blockheads of renown,
Lavish'd their ink, but never harm'd the town.
Though this, thy brother in discordant song,
Harass'd the ear, and cramp'd the labouring tongue :
And that, like thee, taught staggering prose to stand,
And limp on stilts of rhyme around the land.
Harmless they dozed a scribbling life away,
And yawning nations own'd th' innoxious lay;
But from thy graceless, rude, and beastly brain
What fury breathed th' incendiary strain?
Did hate to vice exasperate thy style?
No-Bufo match'd the vilest of the vile.

Yet blazon'd was his verse with Virtue's name-
Thus prudes look down to hide their want of shame :
Thus hypocrites to truth, and fools to sense,

And fops to taste, have sometimes made pretence :
Thus thieves and gamesters swear by honour's laws :
Thus pension-hunters bawl' their country's cause:'
Thus furious Teague for moderation raved,
And own'd his soul to liberty enslaved.

Nor yet, though thousand cits admire thy rage,
Though less of fool than felon marks thy page:
Nor yet, though here and there one lonely spark
Of wit half brightens through th' involving dark,
To shew the gloom more hideous for the foil,
But not repay the drudging reader's toil;