the babbling brook,
The hedges blooming with the sweets of May,
With double pleasure mark'd the gladsome way.

In "Resignation," from which these lines are taken, there is a fine
personification of Hope, though the application of it is designedly
ludicrous.

See Hope array'd in robes of virgin white,
Trailing an arch'd variety of light,
Comes showering blessings on a ruin'd realm,
And shows the crown'd director of the helm.

With him poetry looks best when she is

All deftly mask'd as hoar antiquity.

Scarcely any of these later poems are free from grammatical
incorrectness or ambiguity of expression. Some are debased by the more
serious fault of ribaldry and profaneness. His irreligion, however,
seems to have been rather the fluctuating of a mind that had lost its
hold on truth for a time, than the scepticism of one confirmed in error.
He acknowledges his dependence on a Creator, though he casts off his
belief in a Redeemer. His incredulity does not appear so much the
offspring of viciousness refusing the curb of moral restraint, as of
pride unwilling to be trammelled by the opinions of the multitude. We
cannot conceive that, with a faculty so highly imaginative, he could
long have continued an unbeliever; or, perhaps, that he could ever have
been so in his heart. But he is a portentous example of the dangers to
which an inexperienced youth, highly gifted by nature, is exposed, when
thrown into the midst of greedy speculators, intent only on availing
themselves of his resources for their own advantage, and without any
care for his safety or his peace.

Some years ago the present laureat (Southey) undertook the office of
editing his works, for the benefit of his sister, Mrs. Newton. It is to
be lamented, that a project so deserving of encouragement does not
appear to have been successful.

FOOTNOTES
[1] Illustrations of Literature, vol. i. p. 158.
[2] Nichols's Literary An. vol. viii. p. 640.

* * * * *

HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

Henry Kirke White was born at Nottingham, on the twenty-first of March,
1785. His father, John, was a butcher; his mother, Mary Neville, was of
a respectable family in Staffordshire. Of the schoolmistress, who taught
him to read and whose name was Garrington, he has drawn a pleasing
picture in his verses entitled Childhood. At about six years of age he
began to learn writing, arithmetic, and French, from the Rev. John
Blanchard; and wh