Freedom's calm champion, while in peace her trust,
Freedom's first martyr while her war was just.
Hadst thou but lived thine own designs to crown!-
No! at its brightest let thy sun go down!

If Heaven in thee had viewed the later guide,
From Heaven's elected death had turn'd aside.
Thrice happy one! thy white name is not seen
In the red list of Bradshaw's jurymen;
Thy manhood smote not the grey crownless head-
Thy faith forsook not the good cause it led—
Thy cheek flush'd not at the usurper's scoff,
When pikemen bore a people's bauble off;
Hid from thy sight the loved Republic's doom,
In courtiers crowding Cromwell's ante-room,
And Gideon-Saints, the men of Marston Moor,
Drill'd into sentries at the Brewer's door.
So pass, O pure Ideal of the free,

True star to steer by, wheresoe'er the sea,

Linking the cause that gives the world its breathWith Cromwell's triumph? No; with Hampden's death.

Slow out of sight the conclave fades away, And the last shape which doth the gaze delay, Resting on orb and mace the large right hand, Is yon rude sloven with the blood-stained band.

Wide is the void they leave as they depart;
Long Freedom sleeps,-with Freedom sleeps her art.
The grand Republic-for the million won-
Shrinks into space just large eno' for one!

Safe from wild talk, reign, lonely Cromwell, reign!
Hath not the Lord delivered thee from Vane?
What! would a Sanhedrim of Vanes appal
Less than one stranger-shadow on thy wall?
Why gag the Time ?-To guard with Mutes thy life?
Safer the loud tongue than the noiseless knife :--
To still the flood that floated The Good Cause?

Or save from critics Cromwell's fame and laws?—

Vain dupe, the stream thy genius might have led,
Stopt by thy fear, runs back to its old bed-

And The Good Cause ?-is Charles on his white horse!

And Cromwell ?-lo! at Tyburn hangs a corse !

Yes, silenced long, outbreaks the Nation's voice

"King Charles-King Charles-let all the land rejoice!"

Sick of grim saints, short commons, and long graces,
Welcome wild sinners, laughter, and gay faces.
France saves our monarch from that vulgar curse,
A mean dependence on his people's purse-
Charles from King Louis takes his annual fees,
Snubs rude St Stephen, and misrules at ease.
Shut up the House-can Freedom need its votes
To doom a Sidney?—or to saint an Oates!
But from the flats of that ignoble hour,
What genius lifts its lightning-shatter'd tower?
Wild as the shapes invoked by magic spell,
Dire and grotesque, behold Achitophel!
Dark convict, seared by History's branding curse,
And hung in chains from Dryden's lofty verse.
Yet who has pierced the labyrinth of that brain?-
Who plomb'd that genius, both so vast and vain ?—
What moved its depths ?-Ambition ?-Passion ?—Whim?
This day a Strafford--and the next a Pym?

Is it, in truth, as Dryden hath implied,
Was his "great wit to madness near allied?”
Accept that guess, and it explains the Man;
Reject and solve the riddle if ye can!

But, "halting there in a wide sea of wax,"
Trusting no star, trims boasting HALIFAX ;
And who so fit that fickle age to lead-

An age of doubt, a man without a creed?
Complete as Gorgias in the sophist's art-
Orator not-for orators need heart.

Note him, "of piercing wit and pregnant thought,
Endowed by Nature, and by Learning taught

To move assemblies; "-yes, to reconcile
Patriots to place! That 'wit' had won no smile
From Marvell's lip; that 'pregnant thought' supplied
No light to Hampden; nor dispelled in Hyde
One noble doubt,-in Vane one noble dream!
When what they are not men desire to seem,
Their praises follow him who can suggest,
Smooth public pleas for private interest,
Dwarf down rude virtues with a cynic sneer,

Yet simulate their substance in veneer,

Unite extremes in this sole golden mean,—

""Tis good for both my good should come between ;
And who with zeal sincere can raise the cry,
'My country thrives'-unless he add,' and I.'"

Out on the mask !-we turn a man to find,
The naked face-the honest human mind-

And hail fair SOMERS! If some names more near
Our work-day world shine more distinctly clear,
Yet who shall tell, in glory's luminous host,
Which are the orbs that influence earth the most?
And every life of use so purely bright,

Beams evermore a part of the world's light;
The air we breathe, its noiseless rays suffuse,

Blent in the rainbow, nourishing the dews.

What voice now swells from Anne's Augustan days?
What form of beauty glows upon the gaze?
Bright as the Greek to whom all toil was ease,
Flash'd forth the English Alcibiades.

He for whom Swift had not one cynic sneer,
Whom hardiest Walpole honoured with his fear,
Whose lost harangues a Pitt could more deplore
Than all the gaps in Greek and Roman lore,
Appalling, charming, haunting ST JOHN shone,
And stirr'd that age as Byron thrill'd our own;
Sighing for ease, yet ever keen for strife,

Zeno's his creed, yet Aretin's his life;

With Protean grace through every change he sports,
Now awing senates, now perplexing courts;

A soul of flame, though both a brand and torch,
Firing the camp or dazzling from the porch.
Behold him now, not in his autumn day,
But the full flowering of his dainty May;
Not Pope's sad friend, and soul-deceiving guide,
But the State's darling and the Church's pride.
How the fair aspect, ere a sound is heard,
Prepares the path for the melodious word;
Mark in each gesture force with ease allied,
And manly passion with patrician pride;
And oh, that style! so stately, sweet, and strong,
Which, tamely read, has all the charm of song,
What must its power o'er beating hearts have been,
The genius speaking while the man was seen!
Judge it by this-behold a later time,

His party shattered, and its cause a crime;
His white name blotted, his young vigour spent,
A lone grey man comes back from banishment.
Fear seized the Council; England seemed too weak
Against that tongue, if once allowed to speak ;

Law ransacks all the expedients at its choice,
Restores the peer, and then proscribes his voice.
So the grand orator, his field denied,

Shrunk to a small philosopher, and died.

Dear to all classic taste that age of Anne ;
We love its poets, though their verse will scan;
Its prose still greets us like a pleasant friend,
Though not so wise but what we comprehend-
A well-drest elegant Horatian age.

Suspend the curtain, glance along the stage;
Who's that with timorous yet with pompous air,
Blandly reserved, and stiffly debonnair?
HARLEY, "got up" for splendour and parade;
And ne'er less Harley than when in brocade.

Note, through the levée with a careless stride,
Parting the throng as some tough keel the tide,
With soldier bearing, yet in priestly guise,
With black brows knitted over azure eyes,
With lips that kindle from the gravest there,
The boisterous laughter which they scorn to share,
The stern, sad man who made the world so gay,
SWIFT comes-half-Rousseau and half-Rabelais.
Half-Rousseau ?-yes; for while we gaze on both,
Hating we pity, and admiring loathe;

With varying fever-fits now glow, now freeze,
And shuddering ask, "Which genius, which disease?"
Half-Rabelais ?-yes; on crozier and on crown
Hanging wild fool-bells, jingling reverence down;
Profaning, levelling, yet illuming earth,

Vile and sublime, the demagogue of mirth :

Power, wisdom, beauty trampled, smeared, and spurned : What rests to admire ?-the strength that overturned ! Genius permits no mortal to debase

By his own height the stature of his race;

The crowds beneath if he with scorn surveys,
He dwarfs them not; he does but lift their gaze.

But Swift, not now the envenomed malcontent;
His mind has space-its gloomy fires a vent;
The smile, if wintry, yet plays round the sneer;
The bright stern eye sees some cathedral near;
And the fierce hand that warms in Harley's clasp,
Feels at the touch a mitre in its grasp.

Break up the levée ! that no place for friends,
Harley's gilt coach the equal pair attends
Poet and premier take the air together,

Discussing Church and gossip, State and weather.
See, as they pass, what quaint familiar groups,
What lively Muses in what formal hoops!

See Pope's light Sappho, arm'd with pen and fan,
This points her billetdoux, that slays her man;
While her pale poet scorn'd yet courted sighs,
And one brief folly dims those lustrous eyes.
Lo, Marlborough's duchess! welcome to her grace-
Her with the fury heart and fairy face;

Whose aim a despot's, and whose sense a doll's---
Whose pride Roxana's, and whose language Poll's.

With English humour and wild Irish heart,
See STEELE rehearse what Goldsmith made a part,
Ranging at whim from fever-heat to zero,
Now the frank rake, and now "the Christian Hero."
Play as he will, the deuce is in the cards;
Student at Isis, trooper in the Guards—
A brisk comedian now before the lamps,
And now-a grave Commissioner of Stamps;
Now a church union with the Scotch his wish,
Next day," a project for preserving fish ;"
Inventing Tatlers, scribbling a Gazette-
Ever at work, and never out of debt.

Ah! wits, like fools, oft make their proper rods-
Where Prudence comes not, never come the gods.

But there, with step more modest and more slow, Comes the supreme "SPECTATOR" of the show; Exquisite Genius, to whose chisell❜d line The ivory's polish lends the ivory's shine. With strength so sweet, in its subdued repose, Virgil of humorists, and Pope of prose ;

In this what dignity, in that what ease!

In both what charm!-the rarest charm, to please!

Quick glide the rest. See CIBBER has his lord; Were there more Cibbers, lords would be less bored! See BERKELEY, lingering on his heavenward way, Smooth his large front to the child-laugh of GAY; See peers, see princes vying for the praise Of high-bred CONGREVE, heartless as his plays.