CURIOUS EXTRAVAGANCIES IN THE FORMS OF VERSE. 105 How vain, How wretched is Poor man, that doth remain A slave to such a state as this! His days are short, at longest; few, at most; They be The secret springs That make our minutes flee On wheels more swift than eagles' wings: How soon Our new-born light Attains to full-aged noon! And this, how soon to gray-hair'd night! They end When scarce begun; And ere we apprehend That we begin to live, our life is done. Man count thy days; and if they fly too fast Here is something of a different tone: RHOMBOIDAL DIRGE: BY GEORGE WITHER. Ah me! Am I the swain, That late from sorrow free, Did all the cares on earth disdain ? And still untouch'd, as at some safer games, Played with the burning coals of love, and beauty's flames? Was 't I could dive, and sound each passion's secret depth at will, And from those huge o'erwhelmings rise, by help of reason still? And am I now, oh heavens! for trying this in vain, So sunk that I shall never rise again? Then let despair set sorrow's string For strains that doleful'st be, There are five more stanzas in the same style; lackadaysical enough, in all conscience, and unworthy of the author of a few of the very sweetest strains that have ever been evoked from the English lyre. We have extracted the above, purely for the same reason that the tasteful Ellis included it in his choice selections, on account of its singularity. XV. THE SPIRITUAL QUIXOTE. THIS is a very lively, and no less edifying, oldfashioned religious satire, directed against the extravagances of Methodism, just then coming into vogue, by the Rev. Richard Graves, a sensible divine of the last century, a man of wide and acute observation, and a humorous writer of no mean scope and abilities. The work is thrown into the form of a novel, in all probability to attract general readers; and, apart from the palpable hits the author is continually making, it is full of adventure and reflection, a fair picture of the manners of the day, and the current fashionable follies of the time. It is interspersed with cleverly drawn characters, real and fictitious; and altogether, to employ a common phrase, deserves to be much better known than it is. It is modelled, in a very distant manner, on the romance of Cervantes. The hero, Mr. Geoffrey Wildgoose, is the expectant heir of a genteel estate, and the only child of a widow lady residing in the country. After having gone through a regular university education, he comes home to represent the family in his own person. But soon after this, the young squire, conceiving a pique against the parson of his parish, who had got the better of him in a theological discussion, betakes himself to the systematic study of that swarm of sectaries and dissenting authors who flourished in England during the Protectorate, and which have not yet become extinct. Having pursued this line of study for some months, the operation of puritanical principles inclined his mind to the reception of Methodism, a lately published doctrine, and he forthwith embraced its doctrines with peculiar ardor. After trying his hand in discussions of a religious character with the lower class in his neighborhood, who were proud to be ranked among his disciples and followers, and by whom he was never once contradicted, (this silent flattery confirming his conceit,) and giving the word, on several occasions, to limited assemblies, he at last began to conceive the idea that he was called to the work of the ministry. Prepared (as he imagined he was) by personal experience of the power of faith and the working of grace in the soul, and still more, stimulated by a perusal of the journals of Wesley and Whitfield, our knight commenced itinerant, and for a summer, footed it over the kingdom. What occurred during this period of time, occupies the major portion of this ingenious history. Happily, his field preaching proved not so successful as his zeal had inspired him to expect; and he finally relinquishes his scheme and returns to the society of his family, re-embracing the doctrines and discipline of the Church into which he had been baptized. His attendant, or squire, (a knight is nothing without a squire,) Jeremiah Tugwell, like Sancho Panza, is a shrewd fellow, and a great lover of good cheer. His idea of Heaven seems to have been, if we may judge from his literal interpretation of his master's spiritual allegories, that of a first rate ordinary, free to all comers. Not a chapter passes off without some mention of his hearty relish of creature com forts. He is a cobbler by trade, past middle life, and induced, by a strange mixture of motives, to follow Wildgoose; policy, perhaps, predominating. Yet he, too, has a vein of spiritual presumption, and expects to mend souls as he would patch shoes; one of that class, in a word, whom South has so admirably satirized in his sermon on the Christian Pentecost. The Spanish Don was not more misguided by enthusiasm, made no more signal blunders, in his knight errantry, than did our spiritual knight in his attempts to convert the world. Uniformly he is beaten off the ground, whether it be at the race-course or the fair. He is heard with applause, in the private conventicles of his own sect, but makes no proselytes out of it. He is heard with civil contempt in the drawing-room, which is suppressed in the servants' hall. A love adventure divides his attention with the concerns of the spiritual man, and he is continually engaged in a strife between the flesh and the spirit. The leading idea in the mind of Wildgoose, is the conversion of souls that is his first object, in every company and under all circumstances. The leading idea in the mind, or rather stomach, of his follower is, a perpetual stuffing himself; and a thirstier soul never yet appeared as bottle-holder to any theological pugilist. Many living characters of note are introduced in the course of this work; Wesley, and Whitfield; Beau Nash, and Shenstone the poet; Lady Lyttleton, etc. All of the portraits executed with spirit. Like the good old Novels, the history is full of episodes: there are the private histories of Mrs. Booby and Miss Townsend, Capt. Johnson and the poor tinker, and Mr. Rivers-capital pictures of an antiquary, a Welsh parson, a quack Doctor, and a hypochon |