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The English Ballad uses the past tense thro' the three first stanzas; this Paraphrase the more dramatic, more impressive present tense. The distant clocks, marking the midnight hour, is not in either the Ballad or the Latin poem. In William and Margaret, each stanza rhymes only twice, but the first has no rhyme. Our best writers use the imperfect rhymes freely, and I think to the advantage of their verse, as mourn and scorn, abode, and God, frost and coast;—but feet and sleep, which are given as rhymes in the exordium of that Ballad, are not within the bounds of privilege.

The epithet lily is too nice and pretty for its situation, and sable seems utterly improper, since shrouds were white in Mallet's time, as in ours. Perhaps the epithet sable, temporarily inapplicable, has been one reason for believing the whole of this Ballad ancient, since it was probably the old custom to wrap the dead in black stuff, or linen. The gathering up the sepulchral robe from her feet, instead of merely holding it, is one of Vincent Bourne's variations, and adds the grace of motion to the figure. Statue-like stillness is not necessary to apparition -costume. The ghost in Hamlet beckons the prince to follow it.

This apostrophe to a young prince is another improvement in the Latin version. It preserves the moral of the original and less spirited stanza, with heightened force from the personal address, and from the grand image in the third line. Compare it with the stanza in the Ballad:

Here is no picture, and years after youth in the second line, form a pleonasm;—but the exquisite music produced by the alliteration in those two words, and by the number of vowels in the line, disarms criticism.

This stanza in the Ballad is common-place; in the Latin poem it is an original and charming description of a young beauty; yet to that which speaks only of her smiles and blushes, the charms of her eyes are added by the figure of the morning star in this Paraphrase. In the next stanza also, the discriminating “et faciles risus,” of the Latin version, is preserved by the epithet ready. A prompt smile is characteristic of early youth, though Vincent Bourne is the first poet who, by marked description, has recognized the propensity. The word gay does not, in itself, sufficiently express that facility of smile.

“Tandem, O nunc tandem,” the repetition greatly increases the pathos, and is closely rendered in this Elegy.

Excellent as are the three first lines of this original stanza, yet the Latin quatrain strengthens the awful horrors of inhumation, and the re-translator flatters herself they have not here lost any of their terrific powers. Swain, in the last line of the stanza from William and Margaret, seems a botching appellation, used merely from the rhyme's necessity Whatever might have been the original meaning of the word swain, custom has attached to it a certain character of amorous effemi. nacy and tenderness ill-suited to the perfidious conduct of the accused, and the sepulchral solemnity of the accuser.

These parenthetic and passionate exclamations are all in the Latin poem, and add great effect to the solemn and upbraiding challenge.

How much more spirit in that line than in

The word, ecce! is a striking challenge to observe her changed face, and to contrast it with its former beauty.

This line in the old Ballad is of most unpoetic construction, viz.