terest. Even Sir Cradock Nowell could scarcely keep his countenance; but the parson went through the whole of it handsomely and to the purpose, thinking only, throughout it, of God's great mercies to him. So beloved he was already, and so much respected, that none of the congregation had the heart to tell him of his mistake, as he talked with them in the churchyard; though he thought even then that he must have his bands, as he often had, at the back of his neck. But on his way home he overtook an old hobbler, who enjoyed a joke more than a scruple.

"How are you, Simon Tapscott? How do you do to-day Glad to see you at church, Simon," said the parson, holding his hand out, as he always did to his parishioners, unless they had disgraced themselves.

"Purty vair, measter; purty vair I be, vor a woald galley baggar as ave bin in the Low Countries, and dwoant know sin from righteousness." This last was a gross perversion of a passage in the sermon which had ruffled ancient Simon. "Can't goo much, howiver, by rason of the rhymatics. Now cud 'e do it to I, measter? cud'e do it to I, and I'll thraw down bath my critches? Good vor one sojer, good vor anoother."

"Do what for you, Simon? Fill your old canteen, or send you a pound of baccy?" asked the parson, mildly chaffing.

"Noo, noo; none o' that. There baint noo innard parts grace of the Lord in that. Choorch I handsomely, zame as 'e dwoed that strapping soger now jist."

"What, Simon! Why, Simon, do you know what you are saying

"But

I cannot bear to tell of John Rosedew humiliated; he was humble enough by nature. So fearful was the parson of renewing that recollection within the sacred walls, that no thanks were offered there for the birth of sweet Amy Rosedew, save by, or on behalf of, that recruiting sergeant.

CHAPTER V.

WHEN Cradock and Clayton were ten years old, they witnessed a scene which puzzled them and dwelt long in their boyish memories. Job Hogstaff was going to Ringwood, and they followed him down the passage towards the entrance-hall, emphatically repeating the commissions with which they had charged him. Old Job loved them as if they were his grandsons, and would do his utmost to please them, but they could not trust his memory, or even his capacity.

"Now, Job," cried little Cradock, pulling at his coat-lappet, "it's no good pretending that you know all, when you won't even stop to listen. I'm sure you'll go and make some great mistake, as you did last Tuesday. Mind you tell Mr. Stride it's for Master Cradock Nowell, and they must be sure to give you a good one, or I shall send it back. Now just tell me what I have told you. I ought to have written it down, but I wasn't sure how to spell 'groove."

Why, Master Crad, I'm to say a long spill, very sharp at the end.”

"Sharp at the point, Job, not blunt at the end like a new black-lead pencil." "And whatever you do, Job, don't forget the catgut for my crossbow, one size larger than last time."

"Hold your jaw, Viley, till I've quite finished; or he'll ask for a top made of catgut."

Both the boys laughed at this; you could hear them all down the long passage. Any small folly makes a boy laugh.

"Well, Master Crad, you must think me a 'muff,' as you call it. And the groove is to go quite up to the spill; there must be two rings below the crown of it.'

inches round, and, and, well-I think that's all of it, thank the Lord."

"All of it indeed! Well, you are a nice fellow! Didn't I tell you so, Viley? Why you've left out altogether the most important point of all, Job. The wood must be a clear bright yellow, or else a very rich gold colour, and I'm to pay for it next Tuesday, because I spent my week's money yesterday, as soon as ever I got it, and-oh, Viley! can't you lend a fellow sixpence ?"

"No, not to save my life, sir. Why, Craddy, you know I wouldn't let you go tick if I could."

The boys rushed at one another, half in fun and half in affection, and, seizing each other by the belt of the light-plaid tunic, away they went dancing down the hall, while Hogstaff whistled a polka gently, with his old eyes glistening after them. A prettier pair, or better matched, never set young locks afloating. Each put his healthy, clear, bright face on the shoulder of the other, each flung out his short-socked legs, and pointed his dainty feet. You could see their shapely calves jerked up as they went with double action, and the hollow of the back curved in, as they threw asunder recklessly, then clasped one another again, and you thought they must both reel over. Sir Cradock Nowell hated trousers, and would not have their hair cropped, because it was like their mother's; otherwise they would not have looked one quarter so picturesque.

Before the match was fairly finished for they were used to this sort of thing, and the object always was to see which would give in first- it was cut short most unexpectedly. While they were taking a sharp pirouette down at the end. of the hall-and as they whirled round I defy their father to have known the

one from the other-the door of the steward's room opened suddenly, and a tall dark woman came out. The twins in full merriment dashed up against her, and must have fallen if she had not collared them with strong and bony arms. Like little gentlemen, as they were, every atom of them, they turned in a moment to apologize, and their cheeks were burning red. They saw a gaunt old woman, wide-shouldered, stern, and forcible.

"Oo, ah! a bonnie pair ye've gat, as I see in all my life lang. But ye'll get no luck of them. Tak' the word of threescore year, ye'll never get no luck o' them, you that calls yoursel' Craydock Nowell."

She was speaking to Sir Cradock, who had followed her from the steward's room, and who seemed as much put out as a proud man of fifty ever cares to show himself. He made no answer, and the two poor children fell back against a side-bench.

"I'll no talk o' matters noo. You've a gi'en me my refoosal, and I tak it once for all. But ye'll be sorry for the day ye did it, Craydock Nowell."

To the great amazement of Hogstaff, who was more taken aback than any one else, Sir Cradock Nowell, without a word, walked to the great front door with ceremony, as if he were leading a peeress out. He did not offer his arm to the woman, but neither did he shrink from her; she gathered her dark face up again from its softening glance at the children, and without another word or look, but sweeping her skirt around her, away she walked down the broad front road, as stiff and as stern as the oak trees.

To be continued.

49

THE last two years have made large amends to a poet who has met with imperfect sympathy in modern Europe. Professor Sellar's Roman Poets of the Republic appeared in 1863. Four

chapters are devoted to Lucretius. The fine analysis, which no trait of thought or style has eluded, is perhaps a less strong claim upon our gratitude than the faculty by which Professor Sellar has blended those traits into a complete and harmonious portrait. In October last, Mr. H. A. J. Munro's edition of the De Rerum Natura was published at Cambridge; and, while it applies scientific criticism to a text once before handled with brilliancy but never with judgment also, it illustrates subject-matter and language by a commentary which is a storehouse of Latin scholarship.

Arrears were certainly due from English scholars to Lucretius. His reception in modern times has nowhere been warm, but in England it has been singularly cold. In the interval between the Conquest and the Reformation, almost every Latin poet ancient and modern was ransacked for quotations, paraphrased, translated, burlesqued, converted to every imaginable use sacred and profane. During that period of During that period of little less than five centuries, Lucretius is not once mentioned by an English writer. His wealth of thought and imagery is not once laid under contribution. The mind of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was capable of deriving two gratifications from Latin poetry, and two only. The florid declamation of the silver age pleased the gaudy taste and the rude ear to which the cadences of Virgil seemed tame. The martial legends of Troy and Thebes, the Voyage of the Argo and the Labours of Hercules, came home to those who never tired of listening to the passages of Celidon or Roncesvalles, the Quest of the Holy Graal, the Encounter No. 67.-VOL. XII.

of Sir Guy de Warwick with the Monster of Dunsmore Heath. Hence Lucan finds six editors before the year 1500. Hence Statius and Valerius Flaccus are more popular than Virgil and Horace. But a better day was about to dawn. Early in the thirteenth century the example of the Provençal poets created the vernacular poetry of Florence. Early in the fourteenth appeared the Divine Comedy, the Decameron, and the Sonnets. From the court of Edward III. Chaucer went to meet Petrarch and Boccaccio at Milan. He returned to found a new school of poetry with the Canterbury Tales, and to ridicule the old school in the Rhyme of Sir Topas. A corresponding change takes place in the use of the Roman classics. The allusions assume a literary cast. Instead of Alexander the Great learning falconry on a steed of Narbonne, or Theseus riding at the head of his knights to the Erectheum on Sunday, we have Cressida enlivening her leisure with the Thebaid, and Pandarus refuting Troilus from archbishop Bradwardine. Chaucer is deeply indebted to Statius. But he does not borrow lists of heroes set up to be knocked down-lists like that in the ninth book of the Thebaid,

"Sternit Iona Chromis, Chromin Antiphus, Antiphon Hypseus,

Hypseun Astacides."

He borrows florid imagery-the Altar of Clemency, the dazzling temple of the Thracian Mars, the disconsolate Dryads whose trees were felled for Arcite's pyre. Gower, in his Confessio Amantis, quotes Horace's Satires, the Metamorphoses, and the Æneid. Now that it was becoming usual to employ the classics in pointing morals and adorning tales, it might have been expected that had Lucretius been known at all some one. would have stumbled upon such passages as the death of Iphigenia, the. comparison of a new-born child to

E

a shipwrecked sailor, the rebuke of Nature to her thankless guest. Gower himself would have found a mine of illustration in the last two hundred lines of the third book. But the author of the De Rerum Natura has not even a place in Chaucer's House of Fame. Το be known at all and to be excluded from the indiscriminate hospitality of that mansion, would have been ignominy indeed. Homer and Virgil, Ovid and Lucan, Statius and Claudian, are found there in the society of Dares Phrygius and Lollius, Guido of Colonna and Geoffrey of Monmouth. But there is no iron pillar for Lucretius. As the Gothic age is left behind, he is still more conspicuous by his absence. The most important poem of Henry the Sixth's reign was Lydgate's Fall of Princes. The illustrious shades who recite their catastrophes continually quote the classics: but they quote only Virgil or Ovid, Lucan or Statius. Their reverses never recall the language of him who from his "heights built up by the learning of the wise" looked down on Vanity Fair. And a curious indication that at the beginning of the sixteenth century Lucretius was absolutely unknown in England is afforded by a quaint poem of Skelton's, tutor to the future Henry VIII. Erasmus has termed Skelton "Britannicarum literarum decus et lumen." In the Crown of Laurel Pallas holds a levée. The learned of all nations attend. Modern France and Italy, perhaps from national jealousy, are thinly represented. But of all writers whatever in the shape or semblance of classics there is an unrivalled muster. Ennius and Lucilius appear in their rags among the glossy compilers of mediæval tomes. Macrobius happens to quote a few lines from one Pisander. Pisander himself is not permitted to shirk. The absence of Lucretius, who might have drawn near with some seven thousand hexameters in his hand, forcibly suggests the inference that this distinguished scholar had not heard of him. Meanwhile in Italy, Marullus, after Politian the first scholar of the age, had made the De Rerum Natura the idol

study of his later years. The editio princeps had been published at Brescia in 1473. A more intelligent edition was brought out by Aldus in 1500. The important edition of Giunta appeared in 1513. It cannot be supposed that the De Rerum Natura was much longer quite unknown in England. But, while in Italy Lucretius was dividing with Virgil the allegiance of verse-writing cardinals, England continued to ignore the elder poet. Before 1600 almost all the best classics had been done into English. But Spenser's tame paraphrase of the Invocation to Venus is the sole trace of Lucretius in the Elizabethan age. From the first line of the Eclogues to the last line of the Eneid the language and thought of Lucretius are constantly imitated. Yet Roger Ascham speaks of Ennius and Plautus as the only Latin models possessed by Virgil. Creech's translation of the De Rerum Natura appeared in 1695. If good sense and good taste were the only qualities required in a translator, his version would be excellent. But there is an irony which he knew not, and a pathos with which he did not intermeddle. In the last century and a half of our literature Wordsworth's sympathy with Lucretius stands alone. A special cause has recently interfered with the popu larity of Lucretius in Germany. In that country Heraclitus is no longer the Obscure. The Ephesian came into the hands of his German expositors as Enid came to Guinevere, in dimness and weeds. He leaves them as Enid left the queen's dressing-room at Caerleon, apparelled like the day. Now the phy sical doctrines of Heraclitus merged in the philosophy of the Porch, as the physical doctrines of Democritus merged in the philosophy of the Garden. Hence Heraclitus receives no quarter from Lucretius, and Lucretius meets with slight courtesy in modern Germany. But even in Germany he has had his illustrious admirers. Heyne and Jacobs, indeed, were content to compliment Wakefield on a confused and turgid commentary. But the fugitive criticisms of Madvig and Bernays led up to the brilliant per