With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast,29
A voice as from the cherub-choir,

Gales from blooming Eden bear;30

And distant warblings lessen on my ear That, lost in long futurity, expire.

Fond, impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day? To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,

And warms the nations with redoubled ray.

Enough for me: with joy I see.

The different doom our Fates assign.
Be thine Despair, and sceptered Care;
To triumph and to die are mine."

He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

Alluding to the Plays of Shakspeare, the greatest of English dramatists.

30 Alluding to "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," the works of Milton, England's greatest epic poet.

"ENJOY THE PRESENT SMILING HOUR!"

JOHN DRYDEN,

Poet, satirist, and dramatic author, born at Oldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, August 9, 1631, and died in London, May 1, 1700. He succeeded Sir William Davenant as poet laureate, and afterwards became historiographer royal in 1668. In addition to several plays and satires and other works, among which is an "Essay on Dramatic Poesy," Dryden translated the works of Juvenal, Persius, the "Eneid" of Virgil, and portions of the writings of other classic authors, into English verse.

[The following is a translation of one of the Odes of the Latin lyric poet Horace-Odes, Book I. xxix.-in which the poet seeks to inculcate the necessity of making the best and utmost of the passing hour, regardless of the future, a heathen's rendering of the Divine injunction, "Take therefore no thought for the morrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof" (S. Matthew, vi. 34). Horace was a contemporary of Virgil, and one of the chosen friends of Mæcenas, a wealthy Roman of high rank, who exercised considerable influence over the Emperor Augustus, and who is said to have been descended from the ancient kings of Etruria. Horace was born at Venusium about 65 B.C., and died 8 B.C.]

ENJOY the present smiling hour,

And put it out of Fortune's power:

The tide of business, like the running stream,
Is sometimes high, and sometimes low,

And always in extreme.

Now with a noiseless gentle course

It keeps within the middle bed;

Anon it lifts aloft the head,

And bears down all before it with impetuous force;
And trunks of trees come rolling down,

Sheep and their folds together drown;

Both house and homestead into seas are borne ;
And rocks are from their old foundation torn ;

And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honours

mourn.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own:
He who, secure within, can say,

To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.
Be fair or foul, or rain or shine,

The joys I have possessed in spite of fate are mine;
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Fortune, that with malicious joy
Does man, her slave, oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleased to bless :
Still various, and inconstant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,

Promotes, degrades,' delights in strife,
And makes a lottery of life,

2

I can enjoy her while she's kind;

But when she dances in the wind,

And shakes her wings and will not stay,
I puff the treacherous jade away.

The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned:
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;

And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

What is 't to me,

Who never sail in her unfaithful sea,
If storms arise and clouds grow black;
If the mast split and threaten wreck?
Then let the greedy merchant fear
For his ill-gotten gain,

And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
His wrath into the main.

For me, secure from Fortune's blows,
Secure of what I cannot lose,

1 De-grades', lowers or reduces in rank, deprives of dignity. From the Latin de, from, and gradus, a step.

2 Lot-ter-y, a distribution of prizes by chance or lot. From the AngloSaxon hleotan, to cast lots.

3 Pin'-nace, a small vessel with oars and sail. From the Italian pinassa, probably from the Latin pinus, a pine tree, and thence, ship, because the early ships and boats, like an Indian "dug-out" or canoe, were made out of the trunk of a tree.

4 Con-temn'-ing, despising, neglecting. From the Latin con, in the sense of greatly or very much, and temno, I despise.

5 Blus-ter-ing, bullying, roaring like a blast of wind. From the AngloSaxon blæsan, to blow.

The greatest epic poet that England ever possessed. He was born in Bread Street, London, December 9, 1608, and died in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, November 8, 1674. He was educated at St. Paul's School, and afterwards went to Christ's College, Cambridge. In Milton's time the undergraduates were younger than they are at present, and proceeded to their B.A. degree at an earlier age. They were boys, in fact, rather than men, and were treated as such, for there is a tradition current that Milton was the last who suffered punishment by flogging at the buttery hatch. There is a venerable mulberry-tree still in the college gardens, that is said to have been planted by Milton. He was intended for the Church, but refused to take orders. After writing "Comus," "Lycidas," and some of his shorter poems, he went to Italy in 1638, returning in the following year. Having taken part with the Parliament in the Civil War, he was appointed Latin secretary to the Council of State in 1649, but at this time, through constant study, his eyesight was beginning to fail, and in 1652 he became totally blind, one of the most awful calamities that can befall any man who has once enjoyed the pleasures and blessings of sight. At last the Restoration came, and Milton was deprived of his employment, which his great talent and rich memory had enabled him to follow, although he could no longer see to write; and for mental solace, and the hope of future fame, he turned his attention to the composition of his "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." The former was produced in 1665, the latter in 1671, in which year he also published the dramatic poem of "Samson Agonistes," in which he paints, from sad experience, the terrors of the affliction of blindness. Though a sufferer from some hereditary disease, as well as loss of vision, he bore his doom with patience, dying at last with his

Deprived of his office at the Revolution. He died in 1700. The date of death of each poet-laureate in other cases shows the date of his successor's creation, except that of Skelton.