ing from a battle royal of the fiends. But, as the din predominated over my slumber, I plainly distinguished the voice of my beldame landlady creaming to her noisy brats in the one of a wild-cat to its litter, that heir caterwauling would disturb the 'old gentleman's afternoon nap."

I was no sooner thoroughly awaened by her ill-judged precautions a favour of my repose, than I took en and ink, and endeavoured to seure the contents of the fragments which yet floated in my imagination. am sensible I have succeeded but adifferently; nor can I pretend to ave made by any means an exact ranscript of what the visionary fragnents presented. In this respect I m in exactly the same predicament with the great Corelli, who, you now, always insisted that his celerated piece of music, called from he circumstances, the Devil's Conerto, was very inferior to that which

his satanic majesty had deigned in a vision to perform upon his violin. As, therefore, I am conscious that I have done great injustice to the verses from the imperfections of my memory, and as I have, after all, only the devil's authority for their authenticity had I recollected them more accurately, I will not do any respectable author the discredit to prefix his name to them, trusting that, if my vision really issued from the Gate of Horn, these fragments will retain traces of resemblance sufficient to authorize their being appropriated to their respective authors. I retain some others in my budget, which it is not impossible I may offer to you next year.

Meanwhile, I am, sir, (for any nonsensical name will suit as well as my own) your humble servant,

CALEB QUOTEM.* Argyle's Square, April 1.

Fragment First.

THE POACHER.

s;

Welcome, grave stranger, to our green retreats,
Where health with exercise and freedom meets !
Thrice welcome, sage, whose philosophic plan
By Nature's limits metes the rights of man;
Generous as he, who now for freedom bawls,
Now gives full value for true Indian shawls
O'er court and custom-house, his shoe who flings,
Now bilks excisemen, and now bullies kings!
Like his, I ween, thy comprehensive mind
Holds laws as mouse-traps baited for mankind;
Thine eye, applausive, each sly vermin sees,
That baulks the snare, yet battens on the cheese;

The Editor, in the plenitude of his conviction that honest Caleb is entitled to the honours of the Gate of Horn, doth fervently entreat the continuance of his isionary lucubrations.

Thine ear has heard, with scorn instead of awe,
Our buckskin'd justices expound the law,
Wire-draw the acts that fix for wires the pain,
And for the netted partridge noose the swain;
And thy vindictive arm would fain have broke
The last light fetter of the feudal yoke,
To give the denizens of wood and wild,
Nature's free race, to each her free-born child.

Hence hast thou marked, with grief, fair London's race
Mock'd with the boon of one poor Easter chace,
And long'd to send them forth as free as when
Pour'd o'er Chantilly the Parisian train,
When musquet, pistol, blunderbuss, combined,
And scarce the field-pieces were left behind!

A squadron's charge each leveret's heart dismayed,
On every covey fired a bold brigade-

La Douce Humanité approved the sport,
For great the alarm indeed, yet small the hurt.
Shouts patriotic solemnized the day,

And Seine re-echoed vive la liberté !

But mad Citoyen, meek Monsieur again,

With some few added links resumes his chain;

Then, since such scenes to France no more are known,
Come, view with me a hero of thine own!

One, whose free actions vindicate the cause
Of sylvan liberty o'er feudal laws.

Seek we yon glades, where the proud oak o'ertops
Wide waving seas of birch and hazel copse,
Leaving between deserted isles of land,

Where stunted heath is patch'd with ruddy sand;
And lonely on the waste the yew is seen,
Or straggling hollies spread a brighter green.
Here, little-worn, and winding dark and steep,
Our scarce mark'd path descends yon dingle deep :
Follow-but heedful, cautious of a trip,
In earthly mire philosophy may slip.

Step slow and wary o'er that swampy stream,
Till, guided by the charcoal's smothering steam,
We reach the frail yet barricaded door
Of hovel formed for poorest of the poor;

No hearth the fire, no vent the smoke receives,
The walls are wattles, and the covering leaves;

For, if such hut, our forest statutes say,

Rise in the progress of one night and day;

Though placed where still the Conqueror's hests o'erawe, And his son's stirrup shines the badge of law;

The builder claims the unenviable boon,

To tenant dwelling, framed as slight and soon
As wigwam wild, that shrouds the native frore
On the bleak coast of frost-barr'd Labrador.*

Approach, and through the unlatticed window peep-
Nay, shrink not back, the inmate is asleep ;
Sunk mid yon sordid blankets, till the sun
Stoop to the west, the plunderer's toils are done.
Loaded and primed, and prompt for desperate hand,
Rifle and fowling-piece beside him stand,

While round the hut are in disorder laid
The tools and booty of his lawless trade;
For force or fraud, resistance or escape,
The crow, the saw, the bludgeon, and the crape.
His pilfered powder in yon nook he hoards,
And the filch'd lead the church's roof affords-
(Hence shall the rector's congregation fret,
That, while his sermon's dry, his walls are wet.)
The fish-spear barb'd, the sweeping net are there,
Doe-hides, and pheasant-plumes, and skins of hare,
Cordage for toils, and wiring for the snare ;
Barter'd for game from chace or warren won,
Yon cask holds moonlight,† run when moon was none;
And late snatch'd spoils lie stow'd in hutch apart,
To wait the associate higgler's evening cart.

Look on his pallet foul, and mark his rest :
What scenes perturb'd are acting in his breast!
His sable brow is wet and wrung with pain,
And his dilated nostril toils in vain ;

For short and scant the breath each effort draws,
And 'twixt each effort Nature claims a pause.
Beyond the loose and sable neck-cloth stretch'd,
His sinewy throat seems by convulsions twitch'd,
While the tongue faulters, as to utterance loth,
Sounds of dire import-watch-word, threat, and oath.
Though stupified by toil, and drugg'd with gin,
The body sleep, the restless guest within
Now plies on wood and wold his lawless trade,
Now in the fangs of justice wakes dismayed.—

Such is the law in the New Forest, Hampshire, tending greatly to increase the various settlements of thieves, smugglers, and deer-stealers, who infest it. In the forest courts the presiding judge wears as a badge of office an antique stirrup, said to have been that of William Rufus. See Mr William Rose's spirited poem, entitled "The Red King."

A cant name for smuggled spirits.

VOL. II. PART I.

2P

"Was that wild start of terror and despair,
Those bursting eye-balls, and that wilder'd air,
Signs of compunction for a murdered hare?
Do the locks bristle and the eye-brows arch,
For grouse or partridge massacred in March?"-

No, scoffer, no! Attend, and mark with awe,
There is no wicket in the gate of law !
He, that would e'er so slightly set ajar
That awful portal, must undo each bar;
Tempting occasion, habit, passion, pride,

Will join to storm the breach, and force the barrier wide.

That ruffian, whom true men avoid and dread, Whom bruisers, poachers, smugglers, call Black Ned, Was Edward Mansell once ;-the lightest heart, That ever played on holiday his part! The leader he in every Christmas game, The harvest feast grew blither when he came, And liveliest on the chords the bow did glance, When Edward named the tune and led the dance. Kind was his heart, his passions quick and strong, Hearty his laugh, and jovial was his song; And if he loved a gun, his father swore, ""Twas but a trick of youth would soon be o'er, Himself had had the same, some thirty years before."

But he, whose humours spurn law's awful yoke, Must herd with those by whom law's bonds are broke The common dread of justice soon allies

The clown, who robs the warren or excise,
With sterner felons trained to act more dread,
Even with the wretch by whom his fellow bled.
Then, as in plagues the foul contagions pass,
Leavening and festering the corrupted mass,
Guilt leagues with guilt, while mutual motives draw,
Their hope impunity, their fear the law;

Their foes, their friends, their rendezvous the same,
Till the revenue baulked, or pilfered game,

Flesh the young culprit, and example leads
To darker villainy, and direr deeds.

Wild howled the wind the forest glades along, And oft the owl renewed her dismal song; Around the spot where erst he felt the wound, Red William's spectre walked his midnight round. When over the swamp he cast his blighting look, From the green marshes of the stagnant brook The bittern's sullen shout the sedges shook!