• Cruel gods! does beauty fade, Now warm desires

my

breast invade? And why, while blooming youth did glow, Was this heart as cold as snow?'

SAPPHO'S HYMN TO VENUS. Hail! (with eternal beauty bless'd,

O’er heaven and earth adored !) Hail, Venus ! 'tis thy slave's request, Her peace may

be restored : Break the fond bonds, remove the rankling smart, And bid thy tyrant son from Sappho's soul de

part.
Once you descended, Queen of Love,

At Sappho's bold desire,
From the high roofs of sacred Jove,

Thy ever glorious sire!
I saw thy dusky pinion'd sparrows bear
Thy chariot, rolling light through the rejoicing air.
No transient visit you design'd,

Your wanton birds depart;
And with a look divinely kind,

That sooth'd my fluttering heart,
Sappho (say you), what sorrow breaks thy rest?
How can I give relief to thy conflicting breast?'
Is there a youth severely coy,

My favourite would subdue?
Or has she lost some wandering boy,

To plighted vows untrue ?

1

Spread thy soft nets, the rambler shall return, And, with new-lighted flames, more fond, more

fiercely burn.

Thy proffer'd gifts though he deride,

And scorn thy glowing charms, Soon shall his every art be tried

To win thee to his arms: Though he be now as cold as virgin snow, The victim, in his turn, shall like roused Ætna

glow.' Thee, goddess, I again invoke,

-These mad desires remove! Again I've felt the furious stroke

Of irresistless love : Bid gentle peace to Sappho's breast return, Or make the youth she loves with mutual ardour

THE

LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Oliver Goldsmith was born at Elphin, in the county of Roscommon, in Ireland, on the 29th of November, 1728, and was the third son of Mr. Charles Goldsmith, a clergyman of the church of England, who had been educated in the university of Dublin, and who was possessed of a small landed property. With a narrow income and a large family (for, besides our author, he had four sons and two daughters) the father was unable to give to all his boys that education which he had himself received; and, having drawn too liberally on his finances to prepare his eldest son, Henry, for the church, he destined Oliver for one of the subordinate professions, and placed him at the village school, the master of which had been a private soldier in the army of the great Marlborough. Some indications, however, of early genius in our poet determined his father to indulge bim with a more liberal education; and, with the assistance of his brother-in-law, the Rev. Thomas Contarine, to enable the boy to run the same course of learning with his brother Henry. Oliver was accordingly removed from the tuition of the old soldier, from the tales of whose adventures he is said to have