who loved him as a friend, and always addressed him familiarly as Dick Fanshaw. The plague in London and the horrors of the civil war are told with remarkable distinctness. Then a gayer scene, the Restoration, and the embassy to Spain.

Considered in part as a book of travels, the memoirs are full of pleasing sketches and descriptions, that might rank above that criticism. Among these are pictures of the chief places she saw in Spain and Portugal; of which the account of the Alhambra is circumstantial, and as picturesque as that building is magnificent. Washington Irving might have taken it for his motto to the delightful volumes he published under the same title.

But the charm of the book consists mainly in the engaging naivete and exhibition of personal character. Clever as a writer, cleverer as a woman on the great stage of the world, it is as a faithful and affectionate wife and mother that Lady Fanshaw is best entitled to our regard, and even admiration. Instances are abundant and confirmatory of this character. At sea, with her husband, and the vessel attacked with pirates, she had been locked up by the captain, but bribed the cabin-boy to let her out and give her his coat and tarpaulin, dressed and disguised with which she "crept up softly to her husband's side, as free from sickness and fear as, I confess, from discretion; but it was the effect of that passion which I could never master."

When Sir Richard, as a "malignant," was imprisoned, his wife thus relates: "I failed not constantly to go, when the clock struck four in the morning, with a dark lantern in my hand, all alone and on foot, from my lodging in Chancery-lane, at my cousin Young's, to Whitehall, in at the entry that went out of King-street, into the bowling-green.

There I would go under his window and softly call him; he, after the first time excepted, never failed to put out his head at the first call. Thus we talked together; and sometimes I was so wet with the rain, that it went in at my neck and out at my heels." The story of her procuring a pass to join her husband, when separated by the fortune of war, is a lively example of what a woman can by stratagem do at a pinch, but is too long to be inserted. Sir Richard knew the value of this admirable woman, who materially served him as a banker and agent, as well as in all the duties of a good wife. Often she went to raise money for him; often played the diplomatist to serve his purposes. In both characters she was invariably successful, having wit, beauty, and accomplishments to set off her devotion, sense, and discretion.

Court

Among the less remarkable traits of the memoirs are the genuine relish this fine woman took in two very opposite gratifications-in good living, and pomp and ceremony. She betrays an innate female love of dress and show, and occupies several pages with a minute detail of her appearance, and that of her husband, on public occasions. shows and ceremonies she recounts, with equal pleasure, and yet she is always remarking how much her husband and herself preferred a quiet retreat in the country, to the bustle, and crowd, and envy, and heartburnings of a life passed at the court. As to her honest liking for the good things of this life, she never stops at a town or describes a country without a particular and minute inventory of its

delicious products and artificial luxuries.

These little ex

hibitions of an every-day sort let us into the real character, and are not to be neglected. Who does not love Dr. Johnson for his thousand-and-one peculiarities, especially for his

partialities in eating. The anecdote of Milton praising his wife for the well-cooked dish, is grateful to us. Nor should we forget that Wordsworth was at one period, and is perhaps now, fond of cheese, and that Lamb has recorded his exquisite relish of roast pig. The man that would sneer at these trifling memoranda may be a very useful, but certainly not a very companionable specimen of his species,

XIV.

CURIOUS EXTRAVAGANCIES IN THE FORMS OF VERSE.

QUITE early in the history of English poetry, we meet the most fantastic taste displayed in the forms of metrical productions. The English Muse was used occasionally to cut strange capers, even before the days of Elizabeth, as we learn from Puttenham, a sensible critic of that reign, and, we believe, the author of the first English Art of Poesie.'

Later still, we find in the writings even of Quarles and Wither, curiosities of this kind: in all probability, written purely for the sake of indulging a love of ingenious amusement. This class of verse, we suppose, may be styled geometrical poetry, more appropriately than by any other name. For those who indulged a love of these trivial conceits, (a species of off-shoot of the general tastes of the metaphysical school,) wrote verses in the shape and after the fashion of lozenges, rhomboids, triangles, or pyramids. Sometimes, this absurd fashion led them to versify in the style of obelisks, eggs, squares, equilateral triangles. As a general rule, closer attention appears to have been bestowed on the architectural portion of poems, thus constructed, than to the special subject-matter.

Yet, sometimes, the form added strength and dignity to

the most solemn strains. We think this is the case in the following poem of Quarles.

BREVITY OF LIFE.

Behold

How short a span

Was long enough, of old,

To measure out the life of man!

In those well-temper'd days, his time was then Survey'd, cast up, and found but three score years and ten.

Alas!

And what is that?

They come, and slide, and pass,
Before my pen can tell thee what.

The posts of time are swift, which having run,
Their sev'n short stages o'er, their short-liv'd task is
done.

Our days
Begun, we lend

To sleep, to antic plays

And toys, until the first stage end:
Twelve waning moons, twice five times told,

we give

To unrecover'd loss-we rather breathe than live.

We spend

A ten year's breath,

Before we apprehend

What 'tis to live, or fear a death:

Our childish dreams are filled with painted joys, Which please our sense awhile, and waking, prove but toys.