tire of dipping into it, "on and off," any more than into Fletcher, or Milton, or into Theocritus himself, who, for the union of something higher with true pastoral, is unrivalled in short pieces. The "Gentle Shepherd" is not a forest, nor a mountain-side, nor Arcady; but it is a field full of daisies, with a brook in it, and a cottage "at the sunny end;" and this we take to be no mean thing, either in the real or the ideal world. Our Jar of Honey may well lie for a few moments among its heather, albeit filled from Hybla. There are bees, "look you," in Habbie's How. Theocritus and Allan shake hands over a shepherd's pipe. Take the beginning of Scene ii., Act i., both for description and dialogue:

"A flowrie howm between twa verdant braes,
Where lassies use to wash and spread their claes;
A trottin' birnie wimplin' through the ground,
Its channel peebles shining smooth and round.
Here view tua barefoot beauties, clean and clear,
First please your eye, next gratify your ear,
While Jenny what she wishes discommends,
And Meg, with better sense, true love defends.

“JENNY. Come, Meg, let's fa' to work upon this green,
This shining day will bleach our linen clean :
The waters clear, the lift unclouded blue,
Will make them like a lily wet wi' dew.

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'PEGGY. Gae far'er up the burn to Habbie's How,

Where a' the sweets o' spring and simmer grow;
There 'tween twa birks, out ower a little lin,
The water fa's, and maks a singin' din;
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses, wi' easy whirls, the bordering grass,

We'll end our washing while the morning 's cool,
And when the day grows het, we 'll to the pool,
There wash oursells; 't is healthfu' now in May,
And sweetly cauler on sae warm a day."

This is an out-door picture. Here is an in-door one quite as good-nay, better.

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While Peggy laces up her bosom fair,

With a blue snood Jenny binds up her hair;
Glaud by his morning ingle takes a beek;
The rising sun shines motty through the reek;
A pipe his mouth, the lasses please his een,
And now and then his joke maun intervene."

We would quote, if we could-only it might not look so proper, when isolated-the whole song at the close of Act the Second. The first line of it alone is worth all Pope's pastorals put together, and (we were going to add) half of those of Virgil; but we reverence too much the great follower of the Greeks, and true lover of the country. There is more sentiment, and equal nature, in the song at the end of Act the Fourth. Peggy is taking leave of her lover, who is going abroad:

"At setting day and rising morn

Wi' saul that still shall love thee,
I'll ask o' Heaven thy safe return,
Wi' a' that can improve thee.

I'll visit aft the birkin bush,

Where first thou kindly tauld me
Sweet tales of love, and hid my blush,

Whilst round thou did'st infald me.

"To a' our haunts I will repair,

To greenwood, shaw, or fountain;
Or where the summer day I'd share
Wi' thee upon yon mountain.
There will I tell the trees and flowers

Frae thoughts unfeign'd and tender,
By vows you 're mine, by love is yours
A heart that cannot wander."

The charming and so (to speak) natural flattery of the loving delicacy of this distinction

was never surpassed by a passion the most refined. It reminds us of a like passage in the anonymous words (Shakspeare might have written them) of the fine old English madrigal by Ford, "Since first I saw your face." Perhaps Ford himself wrote them; for the author of that music had sentiment enough in him for anything. The passage we allude to is

The highest refinement of the heart, though too rare in most classes, is luckily to be found in all; and hence it is, that certain meetings of extremes in lovers of different ranks in life are not always to be attributed either to a failure of taste on the one side, or unsuitable pretensions on the other. Scottish dukes have been known to meet with real Gentle-Shepherd

heroines; and everybody knows the story of a lowly Countess

of Exeter, who was too sensitive to survive the disclosure of the rank to which her lover had raised her.

CHAPTER IX.

ENGLISH PASTORAL.-(CONCLUDED.)

PASTORALS OF WILLIAM BROWNE.-PASTORAL

MEN-CERVANTES

BOCCACCIO-CHAUCER-COWLEY-THOMSON-SHENSTONE, ETC.

the praises of Drayton and Ben Jonson, and may remind the reader of some of the earlier poems of Keats. He was a real poet, with a great love of external nature, and much delicacy and generosity of sentiment; and had his judgment been matured, would now have been as much admired by the many as he is regarded by the few. His verses are of such