have outlived the taste. It is a playful dialogue between a Silvan and an Hour, while Night appears in her house, with her long black hair spangled with gold, amidst her Hours.

Silvan. Tell me, gentle Hour of Night,

Wherein dost thou most delight?

Hour. Not in sleep!

Silvan. Joy you in fairies, or in elves?

Hour. We are of that sort ourselves.

But, Silvan, say, why do you love
Only to frequent the grove?

Silvan. Life is fullest of content

When delight is innocent.

Hour. Pleasure must vary, not be long :
Come, then, let's close, and end the song.

THOMAS JORDAN, THE CITY-POET.

THIS obscure writer, whose name is, probably, new to the greater number of readers, was, according to Ritson and others, the pro

fessed pageant-writer and poet-laureat for the City; and seems to have possessed a greater share of poetical merit than usually fell to the lot of his profession. The business of the City-poet, as we are informed by Malone, was to compose an annual panegyric on the Lord Mayor, and to write verses for the pageants. Happily, this office has been discontinued since the death of poor Elkanah Settle, in 1722; since which time, the duty of decorating each succeeding Lord Mayor with all the virtues under heaven, has devolved upon the Recorder, whose annual oration, delivered in the Court of Exchequer, in no very measured prose, appears to have taken the place of the ancient poetical panegyric.

According to Langbaine, Jordan was not only a writer, but also an actor of plays, having performed the part of Lepida, in "Messalina," a play acted in 1640. Before that time, however, he had commenced poet; as one of his many miscellaneous volumes, of which Sir Egerton Brydges has enumerated no less than thirty-four, appeared in 1637. He succeeded Tatham in the office of City-laureat, between 1665 and 1671; and is supposed to

have died in 1671, being himself succeeded by Taubman.

The contemporaries of this busy writer appear to have entertained but a mean opinion of his talents. Winstanley, himself the most vulgar of critics, speaks of him as "indulging his Muse more to vulgar fancies, than to the highflying wits of those times." Wesley, the progenitor of the founder of the sect of Methodists which bears his name, in his "Maggots," a very singular poetical work, published in 1685, invokes the Muse of Jordan as an inspirer of dullness, in the same way, and with almost as little justice, as Butler invokes that of honest George Wither. He has, also, a fling at him at the close of the following stanza of a “Pindarique on the grunting of a hog," which is whimsically characteristic of its author's style.

"Like the confounding lute's innumerable strings,
One of them sings;

Thy easier musick's ten times more divine,
More like the one-string'd, deep, majestic trump-

marine :

Pr'ythee, strike-up, and cheer this drooping heart of

mine!

Not the sweet harp that's claim'd by Jews;

Nor that which to the far more ancient Welch

belongs;

Nor that which the wild Irish use,

Frighting even their own wolves with their hubbubaboos;

Nor Indian dance, with Indian songs;

Nor yet,

(Which how should I so long forget?)

The crown of all the rest,

The very cream o' th' jest,

Amphion's noble lyre,-the tongs;
Nor tho' poetic Jordan bite his thumb

At the bold world, my Lord Mayor's flutes, and kettle

drum :

Not all this instrumental did dare

With thy soft, ravishing, vocal music ever to compare!"

Oldham, too, that biting satirist, in his verse to a printer who mangled his poetry, has a severe cut at poor Jordan, in the following couplet :

66 May'st thou print Hopkins, or some duller ass,

Jordan, or him that wrote Dutch Hudibras.'"

Yet, notwithstanding these confederated stigmas, Sir E. Brydges is of opinion, that there will be found, perhaps, more merit in the mass

of his poetry than in many of his much applauded contemporaries; and that his deficiency was rather in taste than in talent. The following, among other passages, which he cites in confirmation of this opinion, will shew, that Jordan was, at any rate, no mean rhymester; and that he possessed a fund of antithetical contrast, and smoothness of versification, almost equal to Young or Pope. It is a complimentary tribute, addressed to the Parliament.

"It is a sacred and transcendant session,

Where the unblemish'd purple daunts oppression;
The poor man's refuge, and the just man's care,
The true man's trial, and the false man's fear,
The good man's sanctuary, bad man's grief,
The weak man's prop, the wretched man's relief,
The patient man's reward, the scourge of pride,
The simple's safety, and the nation's guide."

BILDERDYCK.

WILLIAM BILDERDYCK, admired as the first poet that modern Holland has produced, and not less distinguished by the other brilliant qualities of his mind, did not, in his youth, seem to show any happy disposition for study. His father, who formed an unfavourable opinion