sort of abuses, the red side of their cheek, the jollity of a refectory. Pope's picture is before me, of

"Happy convents, buried deep in vines,

Where slumber abbots purple as their wines,"

(A couplet as plump and painted as the subject.) The transition to Horace and Anacreon is a pleasing necessity. I am in the very thick of the vines of Redi, the author of the Bacchus in Tuscany. His Bacchus is as flourishing a god as ever, and sworn by as devoutly, though the saints have displaced his image. Florence, at a little distance, meets the turn of my eye at every opening of the trees. In short, I am in a world of poetry and romance, of vines and olives, and myrtles (which grow wild), of blue mountains and never-ending orchards, with a beautiful city in the middle of it. What signifies? I think of an English field in a sylvan country, a cottage and oaks in the corner, a path and a stile, and a turf full of daisies; and a child's book with a picture in it becomes more precious to me than all the landscapes of Claude.

I intended to sprinkle this article with some flowers out of the Italian poets; but positively I will not do it. They are not good. They are not true. The grapes are sour. Commend me to the cockney satisfactions of Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, who talk of "merry London," of lying whole hours looking at the daisies, and of walking out on Sunday mornings to enjoy the daisies and green fields. There are no daisies here that I can see, except those belonging to the Grand Duke. What is a daisy belonging to a duke? Nature is not to be put upon a gentleman's establish

ment. The other fine houses do not impose upon me. They want comfort and fireplaces, and instead of parks, and other natural pieces of ground about them, have vines and olives, vines and olives without end. The peasants are all vine-dressers and olivesqueezers. You meet a piece of a cow occasionally on your table; but a good, handsome, live animal, with a low, I have not encountered for many months. You must go to Lombardy for a pasture. There are goats, very large and bucolic; but goats in England are poor and small, which is the proper goat, and renders a kid pathetic. The only one I have a respect for is the companion of our voyage, given us by a friend, and preserved through various vicissitudes for her sake. A dog belonging to an acquaintance of ours inhospitably bit her ear off, and the storms at sea frightened away her milk. But she now reposes for life, like a matron, enjoying herself among scenes more native to her palate than England itself.

cestors

If the sky in England would only mitigate a little of its clouds and fogs in favor of one of its countrywomen, and of a modest demi-exotic, who loves a green field better than all the sugar-canes of his anBut what signifies talking? Suffice it, that an Englishman in Italy, who loves Italian poetry, and is obliged to be grateful to Italian skies, assures his beloved countrymen (who are not always sensible of the good things they have about them) that there is nothing upon earth so fine as a good, rich English meadow in summer time. That English Frenchman, La Fontaine, is of the same opinion; for when he speaks with rapture of a bit of turf, and says there is

nothing to equal it, it must be recollected that such turf is more native to England than to France; and so he would have told us had he come over to England, as he ought to have done, and taken a stroll in our fields with his friend, St. Evremond. Even a Tuscan's idea of a garden is not complete without a piece of turf, though the podere, or farm, encroaches everywhere, and pounds and shillings must be planted in the shape of olive trees. A garden in the English taste is a "miracolo " and a "paradiso;" their poetry rises within them at the sight of it, but they think this is only for princes and grand dukes. Yet Horace could not dispense with his grass and his oak trees; and the valley which I look upon from my window sparkles in the Decameron with a perpetual green. Nature inspires great authors, and they repay her by rescuing her very self from oblivion, and keeping her transitory pictures fresh in our hearts. They, thank God, as well as the fields, are Nature; and so is every great and kindly aspiration we possess.

C

RITICS lament over a number of idle rhymes in the works of Swift, that may come under the above title; and wish, at least, that they had never

been published. They designate them as the sweepings of his study, his private weaknesses, unworthy of so great a genius, and exclaim against his friends for collecting them. I really cannot see the humiliation. If he had written nothing else, there might be some color of accusation against him; though I do not see why a dean is bound to be a dull private gentleman. But if he had written nothing else, I think it may be pretty safely pronounced that he would not have written these trifles. They bear the mark of a great hand, trifling as they are. Their extravagance is that of power, not of weakness; and the wilder Irish waggery of Dr. Sheridan, slatternly and muddled, stands rebuked before them. What should we have done had we lost Mary the Cook-maid's Letter, and the Grand Question about the Barracks? These, to be sure, are excepted by everybody; but I like, for my part, to hear all that such an exquisite wag has to say. I except the coarseness of two or three pieces, which I never read. I wish the critics could say as much. I have such a disgust of this kind of writing that there are poems, even in Chaucer, which I never look at. But this does not hinder me from loving all the rest. Perhaps I carry my dislike of what I allude to too far. It is possible that it may not be without its use in certain stages of society. But so it is, and I mention it, that I may not be thought to be confounding or recommending two different things.

It is our own fault if we take this Rainy-Day Poetry for more than the author intended it. It is our loss if we do not take it for as much. I give

it this title, because we may suppose it written to while away the tedium of rainy days, or of the feelings that resemble it. There is also Rainy-Day Prose; of a great deal of which my own writings are composed, though I was hardly aware of it at the time. I relish all that Swift has favored us with, of either kind. The only approach that we minor humorists can make to such men, is to show that we understand them in all their moods, that nothing is lost on us. The greatest fit of laughter I ever remember to have had, was in reading the Commination piece against William Wood, in which all his enemies are introduced execrating him in puns. The zest was heightened by the presence of a deaf old lady, who had desired a friend of mine and myself to take a book, while waiting to see a kinsman of hers. Her imperturbable face, the shocking things we said before her, and even the dread of being thought rude, produced a sort of double drama in our minds, extreme and irresistible.

A periodical writer derives the same privileges from necessity which other men do from wit. The rainy days here in Italy are very rare compared with those of England; but the damps which the latter produce within us sometimes make their appearance when we are away; and a ... In short, it is not necessary to inform the reader that periodical writers produce a great deal of rainy-day poetry, voluntary or involuntary. If he excuses it, all is well. I shall, therefore, whenever I am inclined, make use of this title to pass off rhymes that I have more pleasure in writing than in publishing. The other day I was