'Here lies Jonathan Auricular, Who walked in the ways of God perpendicular.'
Mr. GRISWOLD gives us a specimen of the versification of the 137th psalm, in the Bible; one of the sweetest lyrics ever written, beginning 'By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion; we hanged our harps upon the willows,' etc. This psalm, whose exquisite beauties are so well preserved in our common English version, was put into verse with the rest of the psalms, by our pious forefathers. To their credit we can say, however, that the authors of the first version declare that they 'have attended to conscience rather than to elegance' in completing their work. We cannot excuse President DUNSTER of Harvard College, so easily, who revised the edition and sent it forth with the advertisement that they had in it a 'special eye both to the gravity of the phrase of sacred writ, and to the sweetness of the verse;' especially when we find this same sweet psalm completely murdered by him. After stumbling along through two stanzas, he thus paraphrases. 'They that led us into captivity,' he says:
Required of us a song, and thus Askt mirth us waste who laid, Sing us among, a Zion's song, Unto us then they said.
The LORD'S song sing can we, being In stranger's land?--then let Lose her skill my right hand if I Jerusalem forget.
Let cleave my tongue my palate on If mind thee doe not I, If chief joys o'er I prize not more, Jerusalem my joy,' etc., etc.
Such wretched stuff as this our good forefathers sung with the profoundest gravity; and those who thus murdered the king's English and the Hebrew's poem were called 'poets!' Yet this same age could produce such poets as Mrs. ANN BRADSTREET, of whom her great panegyrist, JOHN NORTON, in a poetical description of her says:
'Her heart was a brave palace, _broad street_, Where all heroic simple thoughts did meet, Where nature such a tenement had ta'en, That other souls to hers dwelt in a lane.'
The _pun_ here is good, but the comparison might have been dropped sooner without damage. The poem of Mrs. BRADSTREET, entitled 'Contemplations,' possesses a great deal of merit, and proves her to be worthy of the extravagant praise of her extravagant admirer. The extracts from the poetry of Governor WOLCOTT are very favorable to the poetic reputation of the governor. But the richest thing in the whole collection is the 'Simple Cobbler of Aggawam,' occupying ten columns. The king-fashionable ladies, and long-haired young gentlemen, are successively put on the cobbler's lapstone and hammered most industriously. And we must say, cobbler as he is, he appears to us to give vastly more _blows_ than he takes stitches. This part of the work alone is worth the price of the whole book. It is quite too long to quote entire, and a mere extract would do it injustice. FRENEAU was a rare character, and his pasquinades on RIVINGTON, a tory editor, are rich specimens. The confession he puts in the mouth of RIVINGTON, in his 'Address to the Whigs of New-York' immediately after the close of the war, is equal to 'Death and Dr. Hornbook' on the poor Scotch quack.