Some years since I copied from a MS. vol., compiled before 1708, the following effusions of a Jacobite poet, who seems to have been "a good hater" of King William. I have made ineffectual efforts to discover the witty author, or to ascertain if these compositions have ever been printed. My friend, in whose waste-book I found them,--a beneficed clergyman in Worcestershire, who has been several years dead,--obtained them from a college friend during the last century. "UPON KING WILLIAM'S TWO FIRST CAMPAGNES. "'Twill puzzle much the author's brains, That is to write your story, To know in which of these campagnes You have acquired most glory: For when you march'd the foe to fight, Like Heroe, nothing fearing, Namur was taken in your sight, And Mons within your hearing." "ON THE OBSERVING THE 30TH OF JANUARY, 1691. "Cease, Hippocrites, to trouble heaven How can ye think to be forgiven The dismall deed you've done? When to the martyr's sacred blood, This very moment, if you could, You'd sacrifice his son." "ON KING WILLIAM'S RETURN OUT OF FLANDERS. "Rejoice, yee fops, yo'r idoll's come agen To pick yo'r pocketts, and to slay yo'r men; Give him yo'r millions, and his Dutch yo'r lands: Don't ring yo'r bells, yee fools, but wring yo'r hands." GRENDON. * * * * * SHAKSPEARE'S GRIEF AND FRENZY. I have looked into many an edition of Shakspeare, but I have not found one that traced the connexion that I fancy exists between the lines-- _Cassius._ "I did not think you could have been so angry." _Brutus._ "O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs." or between _Brutus._ "No man bears sorrow better.--Portia is dead." _Cassius._ "How 'scaped I killing when I crossed you so!" _Julius Cæsar_, Act iv. Sc. 3. which will perhaps better suit the object that I have in view. The editors whose notes I have examined probably thought the connexion so self-evident or insignificant as not to require either notice or explanation. If so, I differ from them, and I therefore offer the following remarks for the _amusement_ rather than for the _instruction_ of those who, like myself, are not at all ashamed to confess that they cannot read Shakspeare's music "_at sight_." I believe that both _Replies_ contain an allusion to the fact that _Anger, grafted on sorrow, almost invariably assumes the form of frenzy; that it is in every sense of the word "Madness," when the mind is unhinged, and reason, as it were, totters from the effects of grief_. Cassius had but just mildly rebuked Brutus for making no better use of his philosophy, and now--startled by the sudden sight of his bleeding, mangled heart--"Portia is--Dead!" pays involuntary homage to the very philosophy he had so rashly underrated by the exclamation-- "How 'scaped I _killing_ when I crossed you so!" I wish, if possible, to support this view of the case by the following passages:--