634 
*¢ Now friendless, sick, and old, and wanting 
bread, 
The first-born tears of fallen pride were 
shed ; 
True, bitter tears; and yet that» wounded 
pride < 
Among the poor, for poor distinctions sigh’d. 
Though now her tales were to her audience 
fit, 
Though loud her tones, and vulgar grown her 
Wit 5 
Though now her dress—(but let me not 
explain 
The piteous patch- work of the needy-vain 5 
The flirtish form to coarse materials: lent, 
And one poor robe through fifty fashions 
sent) 5 j 
Though all within wes sad, withcut was 
mean, 
Still ’twas her wish, her comfort, to be 
seen: 
She would to plays on lowest terms resort, 
Where once her box was to the beaux a 
court 5 
And, strange delight! to that same house 
where she 
Join’d inthe dance, all gaiety and glee, 
Now with the menials crowding to the 
wall, 
She’d see, not share, the pleasures of the 
ball 5 
And with degraded vanity unfold, 
How she too'triumph’d in the years of old: 
To -her poor friends “tis now her pride to 
tell 
On what an height she stood before she 
fell ; 
At church she points to one tall seat, and 
“¢ There 
We sat,” she cries, ** when my papa was 
; mayor.” Oe 
Not guite correct in what she now relates, 
She alters persons, and she forges dates ; 
And finding memory’s weaker help decay'd, 
She boldly calls invention to her aid. 
‘Touch’d by the pity he had felt before, 
For her Sir Denys op’d the Alms-house door ; 
*¢ With all her faults,” he said, ** the woman 
knew 
How to distinguish—-had a manner too; 
And, as they say, she is allied to some 
In decent station—/et the creature come.” 
Benbow, an improper companion for 
the badgemen of the Alms-house, forms 
the subject of the sixteenth letter. The 
Hospiial fills the seventeenth; and the 
eighteenth is devoted to The Poor and 
their Dwellings... In the nineteenth, 
twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty- 
second letters, we have illustrations of 
distinct characters ainong the poor—the 
Parish Clerk—the Widow’s Cottage— 
Abel Keene—and Peter Grimes, In 
the twenty-third ‘letter, Prisons are 
Retrospect of Domestic Literature—Drania. 
treated; and in the twenty-fourth, 
Schoots. 
Flere alsa we have to notice the 
Seatonian Prize Poem, by Mr. PryMe, : 
entitled, the “ Conquest of Canaan :” 
Mr. Smepey’s “ EHrin:” and an elegant 
Selection from the Poetical Works of Vuo- 
Mas CAREW. 
Among the more bumourous produc- 
tions of the Muse, we have to notice 
“ The Goblin Groom; a Tale of Dunse:?’ 
by R.O. Fenwick, esq. ‘The following 
is the genewi idea of the story of 
poem, given 10 the advertisement. Tt 
turns on the several incidents of a fox- 
chase, but is called a Tale of Dunse, 
because in that favourite rendezvous of 
the lovers of the chase, the goblin first 
made his appearance. That the minds 
of his readers may be as perfectly pre- 
pared as he could wish, for the manners 
of the age in which it is laid, be apprises 
them, that. the poem opens on the last 
day of April 1806, and concludes with 
the death of a fux on Flodden field, 
twenty-four hours thereafter. ‘The 
country over which he has accompanied 
his elfin fay and merry pack, he has 
viewed with the rapid glance of a sperts- 
man, and therefore trusts, that his hasty 
aid imperfect sketch will not be regarded 
with the too scrupulous eye of rigid criti- 
cism. With all its faults, but without 
further apology, he commits it to its fate 5 
and, notwithstanding the protecting n= 
fluence of wire-wove, broad margin, 
high price, and hot-press, he is not 
without feeling some apprehensions con- 
cerning its success.” The poem itself 
consists of two cantos only: “* The Hos- 
tel, or Inn;” and “The Fox Chace.” 
The introdnction to the first is addressed 
“to Walter Marrowfat, Gardener to bis 
Grace the duke of B h:” that of the 
second, “to Benjamin Buffet,” hs 
Grace’s butler. ‘The object of the satire 
will be readily seen. 
DRAMA. 
First, in the dramatic portion of ovr 
Retrospect, we place ‘ Riches, or the 
Wife and Brother, a Play in five Acts, 
founded on Massinger’s City Madam,” 
by Str James Branp Buxress. The 
strange imimorality of sentiment, the 
indelicacy, and the extravagance of plot, 
which marked the old play, induced sir 
James to frame a new comedy entirely, 
in which he has ouly introduced the best 
passages of the orginal. .We have no 
doubt it will be read with as much atten- 
tion 
the. 
/ 
