utmost hospitality; for Sir Thomas has never suffered the prejudices of his father to enter his breast; and with him, indeed, all recollection of the juvenile deer-stalker is lost in the regard which he feels for the poet and the man." "I thank you, my good neighbour," exclaimed the modest bard, "for your partial opinion; but it behoves me to place the matter in its more probable light, and to say, that Sir Thomas Lucy is too wise a man to visit the sins of the stripling on the head of unoffending age." Then turning to Mr. Thomas Combe, for whom he entertained a more than common regard, "What say you, my young friend," he continued, "this is an idle time with you, for to-morrow is our Midsummer's vigil; will you join us in this pilgrimage to Charlcote?" "With all the pleasure in life," replied Mr. Combe, with extraordinary animation, while Lord Carew and Sir Thomas Stafford declared, that, were they not obliged to leave Clopton the next morning, they should have petitioned for leave to increase the party. "And may not I be allowed, my dear father," said Mrs. Hall, who hitherto had had no opportunity of becom ing acquainted with the intended excursion, 66 may not I be allowed to form one of your number? for though familiar with the scenes you are about to visit, I should much enjoy retracing them in the company of Helen Montchensey." "Certainly, Susanna, if the Doctor sees no objection, we shall be most happy to have you amongst us." The conversation now took a more general turn, and, after being supported for some time with much sprightliness and good humour, the party adjourned to the cool and shady retreats of the college gardens, where the evening coming on remarkably balmy and serene, they enjoyed to a late hour, encanopied, as it were, amid flowers of every hue, the fragrant freshness of the summer breeze. (To be continued.) No. IV. The groves of Eden, vanish'd now so long, POPE. Or that highly beautiful and exquisitely finished poem, Les Jardins, par M. L'Abbé De Lille, we possess two translations, one well known from the pen of Mrs. Montolieu, and the other published anonymously in the year 1789. It is to this version of 1789, now fallen into neglect, and become extremely scarce, that I wish to recall the attention of the lovers of poetry and of the original work, not as being executed throughout with undeviating skill, but as possessing parts of uncommon excellence; such, indeed, as not only do justice to the original, but, from the more poetical structure of our language and versification, seem to rise above it in richness and in tone. One great cause, however, of this apparent superiority has arisen from the free and very happy manner in which the translator has often introduced the colouring, and even the very diction of our noblest bards, where the subjects happened to be of a kind that would admit of such an adoption with judgment and effect. M. De Lille was, to the credit of his taste, a great admirer of English poetry, and has copied in his gardens, though, perhaps, without sufficient acknowledgment, many of the finest passages of Pope and Thomson, Goldsmith and Gray, passages which, though moulded and naturalised, as it were, by a great and congenial spirit, and the first perhaps of Gallic bards, lose, from the very genius of the language to which they are transferred, and more especially to an English ear, no small portion of their pristine raciness and charm. It is evident, then, that the mere re-clothing of these, as far as it was possible, in the garb and spirit of their primary appearance as to style and manner, would give a great additional interest, in the estimation of a British public, to a poem in so many respects culculated to win upon and fix their regard; and, I may add, that it is a task which, notwithstanding the delicacy and difficulty accompanying it, the translator professes, in many instances, to have chalked out for himself, and in which it is but justice to declare that he has in general succeeded. What then, it may be asked, has occasioned a version with so many apparent claims to patronage and admiration, to sink into neglect and utter forgetfulness? Two causes may be assigned in reply; the first arising from a source already alluded to, the great inequality of the translation; for though the more poetical parts of the original are transferred with all the energy and beauty just described, there are many and large portions which are tamely and inadequately rendered; a fault for which there is no exemplar in the French poem, as it is one of the prominent merits of De Lille to have betrayed no feebleness or relaxation throughout his design, but to have touched and retouched every part until the whole came from his forming hand a model of simplicity and taste. The second cause for the neglect which the version before us has experienced, may doubtless be attributed to the circumstance of its having been undertaken within a very few years after the first publication of the original in the year 1782; when, consequently, as no second edi |