How he outruns the wind, and with what care
He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles:
The many musits through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

Mr. Ayton thus goes on:

66

The hounds, whom we left in full cry, continue their music without remission as long as they are faithful to the scent; as a summons, it should seem, like the seamen's cry, to pull together, or keep together, and it is a certain proof to themselves and their followers that they are in the right way. On the instant that they are at fault, or lose the scent, they are silent. The weather, in

its impression on the scent, is the great father of 'faults;' but they may arise from other accidents, even when the day is in every respect favourable. The intervention of ploughed land, on which the scent soon cools or evaporates, is at least perilous ; but sheep-stains, recently left by a flock, are fatal: they cut off the scent irrecoverably-making a gap, as it were, in the clue, in which the dogs have not even a hint for their guidance."

Compare Shakspere again:

Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,

To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;

And sometimes sorteth with a herd of deer;
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:
For there his smell with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled
With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out;

Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,
As if another chace were in the skies.

One more extract from Mr. Ayton:

Suppose, then, after the usual rounds, that you see the hare at last (a sorry mark for so many foes) sorely beleaguered-looking dark and draggled-and limping heavily along-then stopping to listen-again tottering on a little—and again stopping; and at every step, and every pause, hearing the death-cry grow nearer and louder."

One more comparison, and we have exhausted Shakspere's description:

By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still;
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;

And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.
Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,

Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay :

For misery is trodden on by many,

And being low, never reliev'd by any.

Here, then, be it observed, are not only the same objects, the same accidents, the same movement, in each description, but the very words employed to convey the scene to the mind

are often the same in each. It would be easy to say that Mr. Ayton copied Shakspere. We believe he did not. There is a sturdy ingenuousness about his writings which would have led him to notice the Venus and Adonis' if he had had it in his mind. Shakspere and he had each looked minutely and practically upon the same scene; and the wonder is, not that Shakspere was an accurate describer, but that in him the accurate is so thoroughly fused with the poetical, that it is one and the same life.

Shakspere, in his earliest poem, could not forbear showing the deep sympathy for suffering which belongs to the real poet. "Poor Wat" makes us hate all sports which inflict pain upon the lower animals, making their agonies our amusements. Never was this holy feeling more earnestly displayed than in Wordsworth's 'Hart-leap Well;' which is "a small spring of water, about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrig. Its name is derived from a remarkable Chase."

Where is the throng, the tumult of the race?

The bugles that so joyfully were blown?
This chase it looks not like an earthly chase;
Sir Walter and the hart are left alone.
The poor hart toils along the mountain side;
I will not stop to tell how far he fled,
Nor will I mention by what death he died;

But now the knight beholds him lying dead.
Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn;
He had no follower, dog nor man, nor boy:
He neither crack'd his whip nor blew his horn,
But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy.
Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter lean'd,
Stood his dumb partner in this glorious feat,
Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yean'd,

And white with foam as if with cleaving slect.
Upon his side the hart was lying stretch'd;

His nostril touch'd a spring beneath a hill,

And with the last deep groan his breath had fetch'd
The waters of the spring were trembling still.
And now, too happy for repose or rest,

(Never had living man such joyful lot!)

Sir Walter walk'd all round, north, south, and west,
And gazed, and gazed upon that darling spot.

And climbing up the hill (it was at least

Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found
Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast
Had left imprinted on the grassy ground.

Sir Walter wiped his face, and cried, "Till now
Such sight was never seen by living eyes:

Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow

Down to the very fountain where he lies."

To commemorate the wondrous leap of the gallant stag, Sir Walter raised three pillars where the turf was grazed by the stag's hoofs, and he built a pleasure-house, and planted a bower, and made a cup of stone for the fountain.

*

I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost,
When one, who was in shepherd's garb attired,
Came up the hollow :-him did I accost,

And what this place might be I then inquired.

The shepherd stopp'd, and that same story told

Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed. "A jolly place," said he, "in times of old!

But something ails it now; the spot is cursed. You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood

Some say that they are beeches, others elms-These were the bower; and here a mansion stood, The finest palace of a hundred realms.

The arbour does its own condition tell;

You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream;
But as to the great lodge! you might as well
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.

There's neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,
Will wet his lips within that cup of stone;
And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep,

This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.

Some say that here a murder has been done,
And blood cries out for blood: but, for my part,
I've guess'd, when I've been sitting in the sun,

That it was all for that unhappy hart.

What thoughts must through the creature's brain have past!
Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep,
Are but three bounds-and look, sir, at this last;
O master! it has been a cruel leap.

For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race;

And in my simple mind we cannot tell

What cause the hart might have to love this place,
And come and make his deathbed near the well.

Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank,

Lull'd by this fountain in the summer-tide;
This water was perhaps the first he drank
When he had wander'd from his mother's side.

In April here beneath the scented thorn

He heard the birds their morning carols sing: And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born Not half a furlong from that selfsame spring. Now, here is neither grass nor pleasant shade ; The sun on drearier hollow never shone;

So will it be, as I have often said,

Till trees, and stones, and fountain, all are gone." "Gray-headed shepherd, thou hast spoken well; Small difference lies between thy creed and mine: This beast not unobserved by nature fell;

His death was mourn'd by sympathy divine.

The Being that is in the clouds and air,

That is in the green leaves among the groves, Maintains a deep and reverential care

For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

The Pleasure-house is dust :-behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom ;
But Nature, in due course of time, once more

Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

She leaves these objects to a slow decay,

That what we are, and have been, may be known ;
But at the coming of the milder day,

These monuments shall all be overgrown.

One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals,

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

248.-REMEDIES OF DISCONTENTS.

WORDSWORTH.

BURTON.

[WE give an extract from The Anatomy of Melancholy,' the book of which Dr. Johnson said that it was the only book that took him out of his bed two hours before he wished to rise. This was higher praise than that of Byron, who called this book "the most amusing and instructive medley of quotations and classical anecdotes I ever perused." If Burton had only poured forth his singular feelings in his quaint and sometimes eloquent language, and had less skilfully or less profusely intermingled his scholarship, the book must still have been regarded as a remarkable work. As it is, there is nothing like it in our language. We have made no attempt to give a literal translation of the quotations; for the author himself often does so, and almost invariably repeats the sentiment in English, so that his meaning cannot be mistaken. Robert Burton was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, in 1576, and was a student of Christchurch, Oxford, in which college he died in 1640.]

Discontents and grievances are either general or particular; general are wars, plagues, dearths, famine, fires, inundations, unseasonable weather, epidemical diseases which afflict whole kingdoms, territories, cities: or peculiar to private men, as cares, crosses, losses, death of friends, poverty, want, sickness, orbities, injuries, abuses, &c. Generally all discontent, homines quatimur fortunæ salo. No condition free, quisque suos patimur manes. Even in the midst of our mirth and jollity, there is some grudging, some complaint; as he saith, our whole life is a glucupicron, a bitter sweet passion, honey and gall mixed together; we are all miserable and discontent, who can deny it? If all, and that it be a common calamity, an inevitable necessity, all distressed, then, as Cardan infers, Who art thou that hopest to go free? Why dost thou not grieve thou art a mortal man, and not governor of the world? Ferre, quam sortem patiuntur omnes, Nemo recuset. If it be common to all, why should one man be more disquieted than another? If thou alone wert distressed, it were indeed more irksome and less to be endured; but when the calamity is common, comfort thyself with this, thou hast more fellows, Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris, 'tis not thy sole case, and why shouldst thou be so impatient? Ay, but alas! we are more miserable than others, what shall we do? Besides private miseries, we live in perpetual fear, and danger of common enemies; we have Bellona's whips, and pitiful out-cries, for epithalamiums; for pleasant music, that fearful noise of ordnance, drums, and warlike trumpets still sounding in our ears; instead of nuptial torches, we have firing of towns and cities; for triumphs, lamentations; for joy, tears. So it is, and so it was, and ever will be. He that refuseth to see and hear, to suffer this, is not fit to live in this world, and knows not the common condition of all men, to whom, so long as they live, with a reciprocal course, joys and sorrows are annexed, and succeed one another. It is inevitable, it may

not be avoided, and why then shouldst thou be so much troubled? Grave nihil est homini quod fert necessitas, as Tully deems out of an old poet, that which is necessary cannot be grievous. If it be so, then comfort thyself with this, that whether thou wilt or no, it must be endured; make a virtue of necessity, and conform thyself to undergo it. Si longa est, levis est; si gravis est, brevis est. If it be long, 'tis light; if grievous, it cannot last. It will away, dies dolorem minuit, and if nought else, yet time will wear it out; custom will ease it; oblivion is a common medicine for all losses, injuries, griefs, and detriments whatsoever, and, when they are once past, this commodity comes of infelicity, it makes the rest of our life sweeter unto us. Atque hæc olim meminisse juvabit, the privation and want of a thing many times makes it more pleasant and delightsome than before it was. We must not think, the happiest of us all, to escape here without some misfortunes

· Usque adeò nulla est sincera voluptas,

Solicitum aliquid lætis intervenit.

Heaven and earth are much unlike; those heavenly bodies, indeed, are freely carried in their orbs without any impediment or interruption, to continue their course for innumerable ages, and make their conversions: but men are urged with many difficulties, and have divers hindrances, oppositions, still crossing, interrupting their endeavours and desires, and no mortal man is free from this law of nature. We must not, therefore, hope to have all things answer our own expectation, to have a continuance of good success and fortunes, Fortuna nunquam perpetuò est bona. And as Minutius Felix, the Roman Consul, told that insulting Coriolanus, drunk with his good fortunes, look not for that success thou hast hitherto had. It never yet happened to any man since the beginning of the world, nor ever will, to have all things according to his desire, or to whom fortune was never opposite and adverse. Even so it fell out to him as he foretold. And so to others, even to that happiness of Augustus; though he were Jupiter's almoner, Pluto's treasurer, Neptune's admiral, it could not secure him. Such was Alcibiades' fortune, Narsetes, that great Gonsalvus, and most famous men's, that, as Jovius concludes, it is almost fatal to great princes, through their own default or otherwise circumvented with envy and malice, to lose their honours, and die contumeliously. "Tis so, still hath been, and ever will be, Nihil est ab omni parte beatum,

There's no protection is so absolute,

That some impurity doth not pollute.

Whatsoever is under the moon is subject to corruption, alterations; and so long as thou livest upon earth look not for other. Thou shalt not here find peaceable and cheerful days, quiet times, but rather clouds, storms, calumnies, such is our fate. And as those errant planets, in their distinct orbs, have their several motions, sometimes direct, stationary, retrograde, in apogeo, perigeo, oriental, occidental, combust, feral, free, and as our astrologers will have their fortitudes and debilities, by reason of those good and bad irradiations, conferred to each other's site in the heavens, in their terms, houses, case, detriments, &c.; so we rise and fall in this world, ebb and flow, in and out, reared and dejected, lead a troublesome life, subject to many accidents and casualties of fortunes, variety of passions, infirmities, as well from ourselves as others.

Yea, but thou thinkest thou art more miserable than the rest, other men are happy in respect of thee, their miseries are but flea-bitings to thine, thou alone art unhappy, none so bad as thyself. Yet, if as Socrates said: All the men in the world should come and bring their grievances together, of body, mind, fortune, зores, ulcers, madness, epilepsies, agues, and all those common calamities of beggary, vant, servitude, imprisonment, and lay them on a heap to be equally divided,