,' and
Matthew Prior's triplet 'On Himself.' Colman the Younger wrote:

'My muse and I, ere youth and spirits fled,
Sat up together many a night, no doubt;
But now I've sent the poor old lass to bed,
Simply because my fire is going out.'

But how inferior is this, both in feeling and in expression, to the
dignified epigraph in which Landor celebrated the seventy-fifth
anniversary of his birthday:

'I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.'

In the couplet and quatrain of pure sentiment and reflection, some of
the most delightful of our poetry is embodied. Herrick was conspicuously
fond of this species of verse, and his works abound in gems of style and
fancy, the difficulty being, not to find them, but to select from them.
The beauty of one is apt to be rivalled by that of its neighbour. Thus
we find on one page:

'When words we want, Love teaches to indite;
And what we blush to speak, she bids us write.'

And on another:

'Love's of itself too sweet; the best of all
Is when love's honey has a dash of gall.'

Then there is Lord Lyttelton's distich about 'Love can hope when reason
would despair;' there are Aaron Hill's famous lines on 'modest ease in
beauty,' which, though it 'means no mischief, does it all.' There are
Sir William Jones's 'To an Infant Newly Born;' Wolcot's 'To Sleep;'
Luttrell's 'On Death;' and many, many others.

Of nineteenth-century writers, the most admirable composer of the
epigraph has been Landor, who in this, as in some other respects, may be
placed in the same category with Herrick. What, for instance, could be
prettier than this?

'Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever;
From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples in a sunny river.'

How well-phrased, again, is this:

'Various the roads of life; in one
All terminate, one lonely way.
We go; and "Is he gone?"
Is all our best friends say.'

Among living authors, Mr. Aubrey de Vere can lay claim to a quatrain
which is entirely faultless:

'For me no roseate garlands twine,
But wear them, dearest, in my stead;
Time has a whiter hand than thine,
And lays it on my head.'

To this, Sir Henry Taylor wrote a pendant scarcely less fortunate in
idea and wording. L