TO FRIENDSHIP.

Friendship, thou'rt false! I hate thy flattering smile!

Return to me those years I spent in vain :
In early youth, the victim of thy guile,

E ach joy took wing ne'er to return again.'
N e'er to return: for, chill'd by hopes deceiv'd,

Dully the slow-paced hours now move along ;
S o changed the time when, thoughtless, I believ'd
H er honied words, and heard her syren song:
If e'er, as me, she lure some youth to stray,
Perhaps, before too late, he'll listen to my lay.

The play of Bouts Rimès, like its name, is borrowed from the French; and is introduced into the English social circle much seldomer than it ought. One of a party writes down the rhyming words for a short poem; which another undertakes to complete, by filling up the several verses on a subject either chosen at pleasure, or prescribed, as the case may be. The following will be sufficiently explanatory of the practice:

Fade, fade, vain Hope! all else has . . . faded;

Why should I dream and cherish
Since dark Despair that sun has
Which once gave light and joy to .

thee?

shaded

. me.

Another sort of poetical amusement has the name of Echoes. In these the repetition of the last word, or syllable, of a verse gives an answer to a question, or explains some subject, which that verse contains ;-thus, by Cowley:

Oh! what has caus'd my killing miseries?

EYES," Echo said. What hath detain'd my ease? "EASE," straight the reasonable nymph replies. That nothing can my troubled mind appease? "PEACE," Echo answers. What, is any nigh? Philetus said. She quickly utters “I.”

Is't Echo answers? tell me then thy will:
"I WILL," she said. What shall I get, says he,
By loving still? To which she answers,
"ILL."

Ill! Shall I void of wish'd-for pleasures die?
"I." Shall not I, who toil in ceaseless pain,
Some pleasure know? "No," she replies again.

False and inconstant nymph, thou lyest! said he :

"THOU LYEST," she said; And I deserv'd her hate, 'BELIEVE," saith she.

If I should thee believe. ""

For why? Thy idle words are of no weight. "WEIGHT," she answers. Therefore I'll depart. To which resounding Echo answers, "PART."

There are some ludicrous Echoes of this kind in the third Canto of Hudibras, to which we refer the reader; because they cannot well be separated from their context.

Although this species of composition is sufficiently trifling, it seems, from some allusions by Martial as well as other Authors, to have been well known to the Greek and Roman poets. In latter times, many playful specimens were produced. Such is that famous Echo of Erasmus, Decem annos consumpsi in legendo Ciceroneone, ' that is όνε, asine."

CHAPTER XVII.

OF PASTORAL POETRY.

The simple manners and calm enjoyments of rural life have always presented, to the moralist, a striking contrast to the vice and misery of crowded cities and the everlasting turmoil of the busy haunts of men. Much of this contrast really exists; but imagination has come in aid of the real distinction; and the Golden Age of the poets has ever been an Age of Shepherds who fed their flocks in luxuriant meadows, and played, on their reeds, to the listening divinities of the woods, or sung the charms of their mistresses seated under the shade of a spreading beech, or on the banks of a murmuring stream. The narratives, songs, and dramas, which are supposed to have been recited, sung; or acted by shepherds (Latin pastores) are PASTORALS. They are necessarily confined to few objects and few incidents; and hence Pastoral Poetry is the simplest, but at the same time the most difficult, species of fictitious composition.

Pastorals are also called Bucolics, from the

Greek bous an ox, and kolon food, from which was derived boukolos, a herdsman, in opposition to one who tended sheep, or goats. Taste often differs, unaccountably, with the age and country. Our ideas of pastoral life are associated with the sheep. The goat can scarcely appear in a poem the characteristic of which is innocent simplicity; and both the ox and his owner are too apt to remind us of rudeness and vulgarity. It was otherwise with the Greeks and Romans. Oxen were, with them, the noblest of domestic animals. They shared, with men, the praise-worthy labours of agriculture; and, crowned with garlands, they had the honour of being sacrificed to the superior gods. Theocritus, who may be reckoned the father of Pastoral Poetry (for Virgil was not only his follower but his imitator) distinguishes the Goatherd, the Shepherd, and the Neatherd, as rising in the scale of rank. The Goatherds worshipped Pan, as their preceptor in the art of singing or playing on the pipe; while the Neatherds and the Shepherds were the disciples of Apollo and the Muses." The distinction of these three classes was afterwards lost.

The ancient Pastorals were either Dialogues or Monologues. A monologue (Greek monos, alone, and logos, a speech) is a poetical piece, where there is only a single speaker,-what, in