this extract, the enthusiasm of Montgomery was instantly awakened; and translating himself into Dr. Carey, he wrote a string of such sweet stanzas as the following: 30TH. Thrice welcome, little English Flower! Never to me such beauty spread: Thrice welcome, little English Flower! In gorgeous liveries all the year: Like worth unfriended or unknown, Thrice welcome, little English Flower! The sweet May-dews, of that fair land, A hundred from one root! Thrice welcome, little English Flower! For joys that were, or might have been, BEHEADING OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST: 1648.-With all that unfeigned reverence which I feel for our English Liturgy, I cannot find in my heart to style the decollation of this sovereign a Martyrdom: though Charles, as I am free to acknowledge, with regard to nearly all the circumstances in which he was placed during the latter part of his reign, was 'a man, more sinned against than sinning.' I am the more disposed to insert in my Tablets for this day the following anecdote, which has an immediate connection with the tragical event, and which has Pope for its authority, from observing that MR. THOMAS CROMWELL, in his recently published "OLIVER CROMWELL AND HIS TIMES"- -a book condemned not even by Reviewers for its research and impartiality-has omitted to notice it. -The night after King Charles the First was beheaded, Lord Southampton and a friend of his got leave to sit up by the body, in the Banquetting-house at Whitehall. As they were sitting very melancholy there, about two o'clock in the morning, they heard the tread of somebody coming very slowly up stairs. By and by the door opened, and a man entered, very much muffled up in his cloak, and his face quite hid in it. He approached the body, considered it very attentively for some time; and then shook his head, and sighed out the words "cruel necessity!" He then departed in the same slow and concealed manner as he had come in. Lord Southampton used to say that he could not distinguish any thing of his face; but that, by his voice and gait, he took him to be OLIVER CROMWELL.' In the Lansdowne MSS. deposited in the British Museum, occurs a singular story relating to the unfortunate Charles, and the not less unfortunate Lord Falkland, to this effect: 'About this time there befel the King an accident, which, though a trifle in itself, and that no weight is to be laid upon any thing of that nature, yet since the best authors, both ancient and modern, have not thought it below the majesty of history to mention the like, it may be the more excusable to take notice of. 'The King being at Oxford during the civil wars, went one day to see the public library, where he was shewn, among other books, a Virgil, nobly printed, and exquisitely bound. The Lord Falkland, to divert the King, would have his majesty make a trial of his fortune by the Sortes Virgiliana, which every body knows was an usual kind of augury some ages past. Whereupon the King opening the book, the period which happened to come up was that part of Dido's imprecation against Encas, which Mr. Dryden translates thus: Yet let a race untamed, and haughty foes, Oppressed with numbers in th' unequal field, Eneid, b. iv. 7. 88. 'It is said King Charles seemed concerned at this accident, and that the Lord Falkland observing it, would likewise try his own fortune in the same manner, hoping he might fall upon some passage that could have no relation to his case, and thereby divert the King's thoughts from any impression the other might have upon him. But the place that Falkland stumbled upon was yet more suited to his destiny than the other had been to the King's; being the following expressions of Evander upon the untimely death of his son Pallas, as they are translated by the same hand: O Pallas! thou hast failed thy plighted word, Eneid, b. xi. l. 230. (MY TABLETS FOR THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY in our next annual volume.) CONFESSIONS OF A REJECTED DRAMATIST. Plague o' both your HOUSES.'-Shakspeare. Mr. "THEATRE ROYAL, "The Proprietors present their compliments to they are greatly obliged by his preference "of their Theatre, and have read his Piece with much "attention, but are of opinion that it would not succeed "in representation." ALAS! for the unlucky wight, who hath ever received, together with his rejected Tragedy, Comedy, Opera, Farce, Melo-drama, Musical Drama, or any Drama, the melancholy billet, which forms but too appropriate an opening to my truly melancholy tale. Alas! too, and again alas! that youthful authors will begin by writing Tragedies-or, what is to them perhaps more difficult, Comedies-or, at least, by courting the Dramatic Muse in some mode or other. Such, gentle Reader, was the "ignorant sin" which I committed. Scarce seventeen |