renown and first authority, are little read excepting by antiquaries and philologers, unless in the polished versions of Dryden and Pope. This is principally to be attributed neither to any change of opinion respecting the merit of the poet, nor to the obsoleteness of the language; but to the progressive change of manners and feelings in society, to the accumulation of knowledge, and the improvement of morals. His command over the language of his day, his poetical power, and his exhibition of existing characters and amusing incidents, constitute his attractions; but his prolixity is ill suited to our impatient rapidity of thought and action. Unlike the passionate and natural creations of Shakspeare, which will never grow obsolete, the sentiments of Chaucer are not congenial with our own: his love is fantastic gallantry; he is the painter and panegyrist of exploded knight-errantry. Hence the preference of the Canterbury Tales above all his other works; because the manners of the time are dramatized, in other ranks of life than that of chivalry; his good sense, and capacity for keen observation are called forth, to the exclusion of conventional affectations. With respect to his prose, it is curious as that strange English" and "ornate style," adopted by him as a scholar for the sake of distinction, rather than as a specimen of the language and mode of expression characteristic of his age.

66

SOBIESKI.

So rapid and complete has been the decay of the Ottoman empire as an aggressive power, that any person now living, unacquainted with history anterior to the date of his own birth, would treat the notion of danger to Christian Europe from the ambition of Turkey, as the idle fear of an over-anxious mind. Yet there was a time, and that within a century and a half, when Popes summoned the princes of Europe to support the Cross, and the Eastern frontier of Christendom was the scene of almost constant warfare between Christian and Moslem. That period of danger was to Poland a period of glory; and the brightest part of it is the reign of the warrior-king, John Sobieski. It proved, indeed, no better than an empty glitter, won at a vast expense of blood and treasure, the benefits of which were chiefly reaped by the faithless and ungrateful Austria.

Sobieski was the younger son of a Polish nobleman, high in rank and merit. He was born in 1629. The death of his brother, slain in warfare with the Cossacks of the Ukraine, in 1649, placed him in possession of the hereditary titles and immense estates of his house. To these distinctions he added high personal merits, an athletic body, a powerful, active, and upright mind, and, as the result proved, the qualities which make a general and statesman. It is no wonder therefore that, in the wars carried on by Poland during his youth against Tartars, Cossacks, and Swedes, he won laurels, though the Republic gained neither honour nor advantage. At an early age he acquired the confidence of Casimir, the reigning king of Poland, and was employed in various services of importance. On the revolt of Lubomirski, Grand Marshal of Poland, Sobieski was invested with that office, and soon after made Lieutenant-General (if we may so translate it) of the Polish army. In that capacity he led the royal troops

against Lubomirski. The king's obstinacy forced him to give battle at a disadvantage, and he was defeated, July 13, 1666; but the blame of this mishap was universally thrown on the right person, while the skilful conduct of Sobieski's retreat obtained general admiration.

He married Marie de la Grange d'Arquien, a French lady of noble birth, who had accompanied the queen into Poland. She was a woman of wit and beauty, who exercised throughout life an unusual and unfortunate influence over a husband devotedly attached to her. Aided by her favour with her mistress, Sobieski obtained the highest military office, that of Grand General, in 1667. Happy for Poland, that in this instance favour and merit went hand in hand: for a host of fourscore thousand Tartars broke into the kingdom, when its exhausted finances could not maintain an army, and its exhausted population could hardly supply one. By draining his own purse, pledging his own resources, and levying recruits on his immense estates, the General raised his troops from twelve to twenty thousand, and marched fearlessly against a force four times as great. The scheme of his campaign was singularly confident, so much so as to excite the disapprobation even of the intrepid Condé. He detached eight thousand men in several corps, with secret orders, and took post with the remaining twelve thousand in a fortified camp at Podahiecz, a small town in the Palatinate of Russia, to stand the attack of eighty thousand Tartars, while his detachments were converging to their assigned stations. The assault was renewed for sixteen successive days; and day after day the assailants were repulsed with slaughter. On the seventeenth, Sobieski offered battle in the open field. A bloody contest ensued; but while victory was doubtful, the Polish detachments appeared on the Tartar flanks, and turned the balance. Disheartened by their loss, the Tartars made overtures of peace, which was concluded equally to the satisfaction of both the belligerents, October 19, 1667.

The circumstances attendant on the abdication of Casimir, in 1668, and the election of his successor Michael Wiesnowieski, do not demand our notice, for Sobieski took little part in the intrigues of the candidates, or the deliberations of the Diet. The new king wept and trembled as he mounted a throne to which he had never aspired, and which he protested himself incapable to fill; and the event proved that he was right. Yet, when he had tasted the sweets of power, he looked jealously on the man most highly esteemed and most able to do his country service, and therefore most formidable to a weak and suspicious prince. The Ukraine Cossacks had been converted by oppression from good subjects into bad neighbours, and on the accession of