Sordid! unfeeling! reprobate! degraded! Spiritless outcast! (_Kicks the knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy._) This poem, written as a parody of "The Widow" of Southey, is said to have annihilated English Sapphics. Various attempts were formerly made to adapt classic metres to English; not only Gabriel Harvey but Sir Philip Sydney tried to bring in hexameters. Beattie says the attempt was ridiculous, but since Longfellow's "Evangeline" we look upon them with more favour, though they are not popular. Dr. Watts wrote a Sapphic ode on the "Last Judgment," which notwithstanding the solemnity of the subject, almost provokes a smile. Frere was a man of great taste and humour. He wrote many amusing poems. Among his contributions, jointly with Canning and Ellis, to the "Anti-Jacobin," is the "Loves of the Triangles," and the scheme of a play called the "Double Arrangement," a satire upon the immorality of the German plays then in vogue. Here a gentleman living with his wife and another lady, Matilda, and getting tired of the latter, releases her early lover, Rogero, who is imprisoned in an abbey. This unfortunate man, who has been eleven years a captive on account of his attachment to Matilda, is found in a living sepulchre. The scene shows a subterranean vault in the Abbey of Quedlinburgh, with coffins, scutcheons, death's heads and cross-bones; while toads and other loathsome reptiles are seen traversing the obscurer parts of the stage. Rogero appears in chains, in a suit of rusty armour, with his beard grown, and a cap of grotesque form upon his head. He sings the following plaintive ditty:-- "Whene'er with haggard eyes I view This dungeon that I'm rotting in, I think of those companions true Who studied with me at the U- -niversity of Gottingen, -niversity of Gottingen. (_Weeps and pulls out a blue kerchief with which he wipes his eyes; gazing tenderly at it he proceeds:_) "Sweet kerchief, checked with heavenly blue, Which once my love sat knotting in! Alas! Matilda then was true! At least, I thought so at the U- -niversity of Gottingen, -niversity of Gottingen. (_Clanks his chains._) "Barbs! barbs! alas! how swift you flew, Her neat post waggon trotting in, Ye bore Matilda from my view; Forlorn I languished in the U- -niversity of Gottingen, -niversity of Gottingen. "This faded form! this pallid hue! This blood my veins is clotting in, My years are many--they were few, When first I entered at the U- -niversity of Gottingen, -niversity of Gottingen. "There first for thee my passion grew, Sweet! sweet Matilda Pottingen! Thou wast the daughter of my tu- -tor, law professor at the U- -niversity of Gottingen, -niversity of Gottingen.