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To the fine eye, whom Nature's beauty warms,
Tho' faint in heavenliest song appear her charms,
Yet Nature others view with dimmer sight;
Her richness seems to them confus'd delight:
Faint, as the scenes intrude upon their eyes,
Unmark'd, the Passions in their bosom rise.
O teach me, Muses, to select, arrange,
Enforce, and fit them to each passion's change;
With chearful scenes to fill the joyless mind,
With tender images the pensive bind-
Again, when Wonder wakes at Fancy's nod,
Bolder to strike the strings and lead it on to God.
Ye sacred maids, begin! tho' rural joys,
Tho' rural beauty all my songs employs,

Not lowly shepherds thoughts debase my strain
Can shepherds only haunt the rural plain?

Theirs is the life to healthful labor bound,

The bracing air by day, at night the slumber sound
But not th' exalted mind-Let those, who will,
With thoughts so mean their humble verses fill,
Far, far below the lofty Muses' skill!
Of every age the wisest and the best

For toils of state, or of the Muses, blest

'Mid woods and streams and quiet vales have sought
For peace of mind, and liberty of thought!
And yonder see my thoughful friend appears
Wan are his looks, tho' youthful are his years;
Yet in these shades a dawn of comfort springs

And Peace hangs o'er him with her soothing wings.
Hail to my Henry; in those tearful eyes,
My hopes see gleams of pensive pleasure rise!
Have not these glorious scenes, my Henry, power
To gild the clouds that in thy bosom lour?-
Ere yet the golden orb of day no more

His yellow lustre streams the meadows o'er;

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While

While here we sit, the still and fragrant eve
Shall soothe the sighs that in thy bosom heaved
The low by fits from 'mid the grazing herd,
The parting hymn of the melodious bird;
The tinkling of the fold upon the hill;
The dying murmurs of the sounds that fill
The neighbouring village, who, as labour's o'er,
Play on the green, or prattle round the door
These sounds, that are to pensive ears attun'd
My Henry's solemn grief can never wound!

It is time that this article should draw to a close; perhaps my readers will say, it was already time, before the introduction of a fragment, which so little belongs to it. But that fragment is in praise of the solitude, and the scenery, which the writer is anxious to defend against the attacks of Evelyn; attacks in which it is scarcely possible to believe the amiable and accomplished author of the discourse, on forest trees, (and so many other ingenious treatises, the result of his own happy and well-occupied retirement,) sincere. Above all, can we believe him to be sincere in these sentiments, to whom Cowley himself dedicated his exquisite discourse entitled "the Garden," and to whom the inimitable poet speaks in these words?

Happy art thou, whoin God does bless
With the full choice of thine own happiness;
And happier yet, because thou'rt blest
With prudence how to choose the best:
In books and gardens thou hast plac'd aright

(Things which thou well dost understand;
And both dost make with thy laborious hand)
'Thy noble, innocent delight:

And

And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet
Both pleasures more refin'd and sweet;

The fairest garden in her looks,

And in her mind the wisest books.

Oh, who would change these soft, these solid joys,

For empty shows, and senseless noise;

And all which rank ambition breeds,

Which seem such beauteous flowers, and are such poisonous weeds!

ART. II. Memoirs of the ancient Earls of Warren and Surrey, and their descendants to the present time. By the Rev. John Watson, M. A. F. A. S. Late Fellow of Brazen Nose College in Oxford, and Rector of Stockport in Cheshire.

-Genus immortale manet, multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum.

Virg. Georg. Lib. iv.
In Two Volumes, 4to. Warrington, Printed by
William Eyres, 1782.

Prefixed to this work is a portrait of the Compiler, Dr. Watson, engraved by Basire, 1780. This author also wrote the History and Antiquities of Halifax. Gilbert Wakefield, who married his neice, says, "he was a very lively, conversible, well-informed man; and one of the hardest students I ever knew. His great excellence was a knowledge of antiquities, and several papers on these subjects are preserved in the Archæologia of the Antiquarian Society, of which he was a member. He was by no means destitute of poetical fancy; had written some good songs, and

• Memoirs of himself, p. 153.

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was

was possessed of a most copious collection of bonmots, facetious stories, and humorous compositions of every kind, both in verse and prose, written out with uncommon accuracy and neatness."

The object of the present work was to prove the late Sir George Warren, K. B. of Pointon, in Cheshire, entitled to the ancient Earldom of Surry.

It is agreed on all sides that the Warrens of Poynton are in some way descended from the ancient Earls of that name; but genealogists have differed in the mode. Dugdale, following Vincent, has asserted that they are derived from a bastard of the last Earl, by Maud de Nereford, his concubine. On the contrary, Flower and Glover in 1580, having industriously examined the evidences of John Warren, then of Pointon, Esq. have deduced them in the legitimate fine from a more remote ancestor, Reginald, younger brother of William third Earl of Warren and Surry. A critical attention to all that Dr. Watson, with the aid of these authorities, has been able to urge in favour of the latter mode, induces me to confess that he leaves the matter in very great doubt.

The writer of this article is willing to pay due respect to the authority of Robert Glover; but his experience has induced him never to rely on the unsupported dicta even of this learned genealogist in points of descent, removed so far from his own time. He considers the signature of an eminent herald, in the exercise of his official capacity, to be strong (not conclusive) evidence of those parts of a pedigree, which have occurred in his own time, and perhaps for two or three generations above; though many of the records of the Heralds' College compiled during the existence

of

of Visitations, may be proved by abundant and irrefragible evidence to be not only unaccountably omissive, but not unfrequently positively erroneous. But in the earlier parts of these pedigrees, they are often so bare, so palpably false, and full of such ridiculous blunders, as almost to exceed the belief of any man not very conversant with them. Glover seems to have been the first who set the example of examining the record offices at the Tower, at Westminster, and the Rolls; but all his MSS. prove that these researches were yet in their infancy; and that he was overwhelmed with the multiplicity of materials that were thus opened to his enquiries. He could not upon every occasion. abandon the use and the authority of those meagre pedigrees, by which his predecessors had been guided. They, who are in the habit of bowing to a name, without examining the basis on which it stands, will stare at this assertion; but the writer has not made it without repeated proofs of its truth.

To proceed then to the case before us. The charters in the Register of Lewes Priory, demonstrate that the 3d Earl Warren had a brother Reginald, and that the last had a son William de Warren; and hence it seems that for two generations we stand upon the mere dicta of these heralds, which, as they profess to have made out this genealogy upon public and private evidences, yet cite neither records nor deeds, I confider to be so slight, as to be nothing more than a guess. The son of William de Warren is said here to have been Sir John de Warren, Kt. who married Alice, daughter of Roger de Townsend of Norfolk, (a marriage not found in the Townsend pedigrec) and to have had John de Warren, who by Joan daughter of

Sir

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