and through an opening in the forest the court of Venus approaches, shedding a transcendent brightness over the groves, and composed of every hero and heroine of classical and romantic story. The description of Mars upon his barded courser stout and bald' is noble:

Everie invasabill wapon1 on him he bair;
His luik wes grym, his bodie large and squair,
His lymmis weill entailyiet to be strang,
His neck was grit a span breadth weill or mair,
His visage bald with crisp broun curland hair;
Of stature not ouir grit nor yet ouir lang,
Behaldand Venus Oh ye, my lufe, he sang:
And scho again with dalliance sa fair,

Her knycht hym cleipis quhair sa he ride or gang.

Thus modernized:

The mighty Mars a barded courser bore,

Grim was his look, his body large and square,
His sinewy neck in breadth a span or more,

Round which did shortly curl his crisp brown hair;
His limbs well-knit, and of proportion fair,
Were clothed in panoply of radiant steel.

On Venus still he gaz'd with amorous air,
And she her knight him call'd in woe or weal,
Whilst o'er his noble form her love-lit glances steal.

This brave apparition is scarcely past, when it is succeeded by the court of Minerva, composed ofwise, eloquent fathers, and pleasant ladies of fresh beauty,' all of them directing their course to the Palace of Honour, and cheering the tedium of the journey by rehearsing Greek and Latin histories, and chaunting to their lyre Sapphic and Elegiac Odes. We regret it is impossible to

4 bold.

2 look.

1 invulnerable weapon.
5 beholding.

3 well knit.

6 calls.

follow them in their progress; but some of the insulated pictures are beautiful. The poet mounts a gallant steed, caparisoned with woodbine; and, under the guidance of a sweet nymph to whom he had been introduced by Calliope, he takes his joyous way with the Muses, and at length arrives at the Castalian fount :

S

Beside that cristall weill' sweet and digist 2,
Thame to repois, their hors refresch and rest;
Alichtit doun thir Musis cleir of hue.
The companie all haillelie lest and best,
Thrang to the well to drink, quhilkran south-west,
Throut ane meid whair alkin flouris grew
Amang the laif full fast I did persew
To drink; bot sa the great press me opprest,
That of the water I micht not taste een a drew 7.

Our horsis pasturit in ane plesand plane,
Law at the fute of ane fair greene montaine,

Amid ane meid schaddowit with cedar trees;
Saif fra all heit, thair micht we weill remain.
All kind of herbis, flouris, frute, and greine,

With everie grow and tree thair men micht cheis".
The boeriall streams, rinnand ouir stanerie greis,
Made sober noy is; the schaw dinnit 10 agane,

For birdis sang, and sounding of the beis.
The ladies fair on divers instrumentes
Went playand, singand, dansand our the bentis11;
Full angellik and hevenlie was thair soun.
Quhat creature amid his hart imprintis
The fresche beautie, the gudelie representis,

The merrie speeche, fair haveing, hie renoun,
Of thame, wad sit a wise man half in swoun;
Their womanlines, uryithit the elementis'',
Stoneist the hevin, and all the eirth adoun.

3

wholesome. * alighted.
crowd.
7 drop.
11 fields.

1 well. 5 all kind. 10 resounded.

2

* which.

9

pastured. choose. 12 charmed the elements.

8

The warld may not consider nor descrive1
The hevinlie joy, the bliss I saw belive ;
Sa ineffable above my wit, sa hie,
I will na mair thairon my forehead rive
Bot briefly forth my febill process drive;-
Law in the meid ane palyeon picht I see,
Maist gudeliest, and richest that micht be:
My governour aftner than tymis five

Unto that hald to pass commandit me.

I attempt a free translation of these fine stanzas, as the language is so obscure:

Beside that fount, with clearest crystal blest,
Alighted down the Muses bright of hue,
Themselves to solace and their steeds to rest;
And all their followers ou the instant drew

To taste the stream, which sparkling leapt to view, Thro' freshest meads with laurel canopied.

Then trembling to the well renown'd I flew, But the rude crowd all passage there defied, Nor might I snatch a drop of that celestial tide. Our horses pastured in a pleasant field,

Verdant and rich, beneath a mountain green, Where, from the mid-day heat a shade to yield, Some ancient cedars wove a leafy screen;

On the smooth turf unnumbered flowers were seen
Weaving a carpet 'neath umbrageous trees,

And o'er their channels, pav'd with jewels sheen,
The waters gliding did the senses please,
Mingling their quiet tunes with hum of honied bees.
On many an instrument of breath or string

These gentle ladies play'd or playing sung;
Some sat beneath the trees in lovely ring,

Some solitary stray'd the flowers among; Ev'n the rude elements in silence hung, And wooed their music with intense delight;

Whilst from their charms such dazzling rays were flung, As utterly amaz'd all mortal sight, And might have thaw'd the heart of sternest anchorite.

1 describe.

2 a pavilion pitched.

Far doth it pass all powers of living speech
To tell the joy that from these sights I took;
And if so high the wondrous theme doth reach,
How should my vein the great endeavour brook!
We may not soar so high, my little book.
But pass we on:-Upon the field I spied,

་

Woven of silk, with golden post and hook, A goodly tent unfold its wings of pride, To whose delightsome porch me drew my lovely guide. Obeying his sweet conductress, Master Gavin enters this rich pavilion, and there sees the Muses sitting on deissis,' or elevated seats of distinction, served by familiars with ippocras and mead, and partaking, much in the same fashion as mortal ladies, of delicate meats and varied dainties. After the feast, Calliope commands Ovid, whom she quaintly calls her "Clerk Register," to recreate them with a song; and this favoured minstrel chaunts the deeds of the heroes of ancient days, not forgetting a digression upon transfigurations and the art and remedy of love. He is followed by other eminent bards; but the enumeration forms rather a ludicrous catalogue than a characteristic or animated picture. It is wound up by

Poggius, who stood, a groaning, girning fallow, Spitting, and cryand Fy, on great Laurentius Valla. The trumpet now sounds to horse, and the Muses, with their whole attendants and followers, throwing themselves on their steeds, gallop on at a goodly pace till they reach a charming valley, wherein a mighty rock is seen, which we immediately discover to be some sacred and glorious place, for the moment it is descried the whole assembly bow their heads and give thanks that they are permitted to behold the end of their journey.

VOL. III.

It is here that the allegory, in its profane admixture of the Pagan mythology with the Christian system, becomes unnatural and painful. We find that the palace built upon this rock is intended to shadow forth the bliss of heaven; and that under the word Honour, which, to our modern ears, conveys a very different idea, we are to understand that heavenly honour and distinction to which the Christian aspires. This being the case, why does the explanation of such mysteries proceed from the lips of a Pagan goddess?-and what has Venus, the most meretricious, though sometimes the most elegant, of classical personifications, to do with that sacred and blessed system, that "state of grace," as the poet himself denominates it, which ought ever to be kept pure and undefiled, as the heavenly source from which it has proceeded? With how much ner taste and holier feeling has a later poet, but he, indeed, "the mightiest master of the Christian lyre," described the desertion of the Pagan shrines, the silence of the oracles, the terror of the priests and flamens, and the passing away of the dark and unholy mysteries which constituted the system of heathen worship, at the birth of our Redeemer :

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.