And in his lines on the Eagle, from another gem: So when with bristling plumes the bird of Jove, Vindictive leaves the argent fields above, Borne on broad wings the guilty world he awes, And grasps the lightning in his shining claws. _Botanic Garden_, p. I, c. I, 205. where I cannot but observe the peculiar beauty of the epithet applied to the plumes of the eagle. It is the right translation of the word by which Pindar has described the ruffling of the wings on the back of Zetes and Calais. [Greek:--pteroisin naeta pephrikontas ampho porphyreois.] Pyth. 4, 326. which an Italian translator has entirely mistaken; Uomin' ambi, ch'orrore a' risguardanti Facean coi rosseggianti Vanni del tergo. But Darwin could have known nothing of Pindar; and the word may perhaps he found with a similar application in one of our own poets. As the singularity of his poems caused them to be too much admired at first, so are they now more neglected than they deserve. There is about as much variety in them as in a bed of tulips, of which the shape is the same in all, except that some are a little more rounded at the points than others; yet they are diversely streaked and freckled, with a profusion of gay tints, in which the bizarre (as it is called by the fanciers of that flower) prevails. They are a sight for one half hour in the spring, and no more; and are utterly devoid of odour. * * * * * WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE. William Julius Mickle was born on the 29th of September, 1734, at Longholm, in the county of Dumfries, of which place his father, Alexander Meikle, or Mickle, a minister of the church of Scotland, was pastor. His mother was Julia, daughter of Thomas Henderson, of Ploughlands, near Edinburgh. In his thirteenth year, his love of poetry was kindled by reading Spenser's Faery Queen. Two years after, his father, who was grown old and infirm, and had a large family to educate, by an unusual indulgence obtained permission to reside in Edinburgh, where Mickle was admitted a pupil at the High School. Here he remained long enough to acquire a relish for the Greek and Latin classics. When he was seventeen years old, his father unluckily embarking his capital in a brewery, which the death of his wife's brother had left without a manager, William was taken from school, and employed as clerk under the eldest son, in whose name the business was carried on. At first he must have been attentive enough to his employment; for on his coming of age, the property was made over to him, on the condition of paying his family a certain share of the profits arising from it. Afterwards, he suffered himself to be seduced from business by the attractions of literature. His father died in 1758; and, in about three years he published, without his name, Knowledge, an Ode, and a Night Piece, the former of which had been written in his eighteenth year. In both there is more of