fensive flaw. The great difficulty is, how any one can pronounce that as a perfection, which another as stubbornly maintains to be a blemish, and both labouring to foist their opinions upon persons as quick-sighted as = themselves. Such diversity of sentiment cannot arise from the subject contemplated, for it cannot, as a whole, be good and bad at the same moment, but must originate in the medium of perception. Of the work before us, there is a conflict of opinion, and from that alone, had we not read it, we should have been led to attach to it a degree of importance which is alone due to the writings of a man of no ordinary mind; for where a work is really bad, there can be but one opinion of it; and when feeble, it is beneath the serious and dignified notice of reviewers. Nor is this all. The avidity with which these volumes have been seized by journalists, at the very instant of publication, almost wet from the press, proves at least the quickness of their scent, and evinces, even on the assumption that a disposition existed to run them down, that genuine game has been started. For ourselves, we have not been recently favoured with a higher treat than has been afforded by these two handsomely printed volumes. Though they are not distinguished for great strength, they exhibit the qualities of elegance and ease-of great acuteness-close observation-and prove the author to possess a fine imagination. A store of keen wit is evidently ever at hand, ready to shoot forth from the pen, like a sting from the mouth of a serpent; but it is admirably subdued by an exuberance of chastised Christian feeling; and supported by this, is a tenderness of heart, which, like the strings of an Eolian lyre, tremulously alive to every motion of air, expands and softens, and is affected by every touch of humanity. There is a tribute due also to the ear, which is exquisitely tuned to the harmony of numbers; and we have seldom seen greater dexterity than is here displayed, by any writer, in extricating himself, after having been involved in an apparent labyrinth through his speculations. While the style of the author, which is peculiarly his own, stamps him with a high degree of respectability as a prose writer, which will not fail to secure him a place among the British classics, his " Voyage of the Blind," should he never write another stanza, will, both in the construction of the measure, and in the execution of the subject, prepare for him a conspicuous niche among the British poets: and on both of these grounds, we hesitate not to give our voice in favour of " Prose by a Poet." Superior to the mere drudgery of hunting out antiquated subjects, and exhibiting them in modern costume, it is for the present writer to elicit new thoughts, and new images; and what we cannot but applaud is, that, notwithstanding the playfulness in which he has occasionally indulged, he disdains to sacrifice a solitary Christian feeling, or diminish the magnitude and force of a single Christian principle. After passing along the varied walks of thought and of imagination, through which he is pleased to lead his readers, himself frequently frisking before them with all the anticks of a sprightly youth, but with all the innocent airs of the lamb, they were as fully prepared to enter with him into the "African Valley," and for contemplating the end of all things at the close of the work, as though the deepest gravity had preceded. There is not any thing calculated to weaken the respect which the reader is compelled to entertain towards the author as a man of genius, and a man of feeling, or to unfit him for reaping the most salutary Christian instruction, communicated in a way that operates upon the mind like a charm. Happy, happy would it have been for Britain and for the world, if all the giant spirits of the present day had permitted the curb of Christianity to give a solemn check, when, in some of their more wildly imaginative compositions, they were allured beyond the precincts of probability and truth, and even of decency. Were we solicitous to establish the truth of what we have advanced, we could produce whole pages in point, and we should then leave a thousand beauties, sparkling like diamonds, untouched; for the difficulty alone lies in the selection. In the article entitled "Pen, Ink, and Paper," the author affords some fine specimens of the talent which he possesses for sketches of character, exhibiting to -com the life, and with a pencil dipped in minds especially, may be highly exhilarating the most glowing colours, the peculi- for a while. But, independent of the obscuarities which distinguish the poetic rity, sameness, and repetition, which are progeniuses which at present hold their original be in existence; though it is almost bably characteristics of the original,—if any respective stations on Mount Paras much at a man's peril to doubt that now, as it nassus, and upon whom the eye of Eu-was to believe it formerly, the translation is rope is fixed. Scott, Southey, Words- 'done into English,' in such a Babylonish worth, Campbell, Moore, and Byron, dialect,' that it might be presumed, no ear, have often been before the artist, but the freedom of eloquent prose, could endure accustomed to the melody of pure verse, or we never saw it on this fashion; ne- the incongruities of a style, in which broken ver till now were we introduced into verse of various measures, and halting prose all but their actual presence. Nor of unmanageable cadences, compound senare his descriptive powers less to be tences, as difficult to read, and as dissonant to admired, of which we have various tion and effect, if every bar were set to a difhear, as a strain of music would be, in execuinstances in "A Six Miles' Tour,"ferent time and in a different key. If for such "My Journal át Scarborough,"-" A wild works of imagination a corresponding Forenoon at Harrogate," and in "An form of diction be desirable, a style between African Valley," in the first of which, prose and verse, not one in which both are especially, an interest, rarely to be heterogeneously jumbled, might perhaps be invented. For this purpose we must have a met with, is given to some of the most poetical foundation, with a prose superstrucfamiliar and trivial incidents in hu- ture; the former, that the vehicle of thought man life, incidents which would have may admit of florid embellishment, and the latescaped the observation of almost ter, that full license may be obtained of accomevery one but himself, but which, from modating the phraseology to the ideas, unentheir familiarity and simplicitycumbered with rhyme, and unlimited by metrical trammels. ing home to every bosom, and beaming "The episode of Morna is perhaps the most before every eye, a considerable por- truly beautiful and pathetic, as well as simple tion of that interest is derived. "The and intelligible, narrative among these singular Life of a Flower by Itself," is as novel, which is submitted to the curious, the anapesproductions. In the following experiment, as the fable of "The Moon and Stars" tic foot is adopted as the groundwork, be is finely conceived; and "The Acorn," cause cadences of this measure bave peculiar in its vegetable history, is strikingly fluency. There is some difficulty, indeed, to and pleasingly portrayed. While the reader, in hitting the right accents at all "A Dialogue of the Alphabet," and times, from the great laxity of our language in "A Scene not to be found in any yet, as this movement, either in verse or prose, this respect, and the carelessness of writers ;Play," discover a narrow inspection admits of the utmost variety of subdivisions, and a suitable improvement of passing and the lines may be expanded or contracted political events; not any thing is more at pleasure, according to the burden of matcalculated than "Common- Place" to ter; it is well suited to a mode of composition, smite us for our ingratitude of every- the freedom of discourse, if such an union which would blend the harmony of song with day blessings. The paper on "Old were compatible. The present attempt to tame Women" excites our softest sympa-prose run mad' into what may be easily dethy, and that on "Juvenile Delin- signated by a phrase not less opprobrious, has quency" our horror; while the " Afa claim to be received with indulgence by the rican Valley," a subject already more admirers of Gaelic legends; and if a fault, it than once alluded to, but which seems impunity to public taste, since the offence is not may be forgiven by the critics, with perfect to follow us wherever we go, exhibits likely to be imitated, nor will the original culprit Christianity as the reformer and reno- soon be induced to repeat it, being himself of vator of man, as well as the balm of opinion, that though a few pages got up in this human life. manner may not be unpleasing, a volume would be intolerable."-(Vol. I. p. 29.) There is one subject, which, from its novelty in poetry, demands peculiar attention, and in which the writer evinces his knowledge of the capabilities of the English language, and of the power of verse; it is an experiment on an episode in the poems of Ossian. We will permit him to speak for himself: "Macpherson's Ossian has had many admirers, and it cannot be denied that the rhap; sodies attributed to the Son of Fingal abound with striking imagery, heroic sentiment, and hardy expression; the effect of which, on young The author had not the most distant idea of submitting the whole of Ossian to this experiment, for that, in his ble." We are happy, however, to see "would be intoleraown language, the attempt as far as he has proceeded, and we should have been equally allowed us to cite the piece at length. so, provided our limits would have He had too much good sense and good taste to proceed further than “ a few pages," and for these few he has our warmest thanks. We will take our leave of these interesting volumes, with an extract from the article entitled “ Mutability,” which affords one, among many instances, of the writer's style, and his powers of invention : “Were we to select some mountain in the midst of a tropic wilderness, where the foot of man hath never trod, nor his hand for one moment interrupted the course of nature, from the hour when the waters of the deluge left the solitary elevation bare to the influences of the heavens; the action of sunshine, rain, and storins, through four thousand years, unremittingly modifying its surface;-and could we be presented with accurate pictures of its respective appearances from century to century, there cannot be a doubt that each would be so dissimilar from all the rest, as to be perfectly distinguishable. The bulk, the face, the produce, and many other features of a huge heap of earth, with a crest of rocks upon its brow, thus left to itself and the elements, would probably exhibit such alternate progress, both of decay and renewal, that even the history of a bill might be rendered an interesting work. "For example:-we should read how the ragged and angular crags on its peak were insensibly worn down by the tread of Time, till they became comparatively smooth prominences, richly tinted with lichens and mosses; -bow its naked sides were from season to season clothed with grass, and flowers, and plants of increasing variety, as fresh seeds were wafted by winds, or scattered by birds upon its soil;-how a forest at length overshadowed it, which, for hundreds of years, was the haunt of wild beasts, and deadly serpents, till the lightning of heaven, striking suddenly in the midst, fired a dead trunk, from which the tempest drove the flames among the multitude of living trees, and consumed the whole to ashes; -bow in a few years a luxuriant jungle of underwood covered this desolation, and gave food as well as shelter to the weaker animals, when they fled from the lion and the leopard in the chase;-how again all this beauty was laid waste by a volcanic eruption, that converted the mountain into a furnace, which, however, in the lapse of ten generations of the race of man, burned itself out, and left a hideous mass of crude cinders, for the invisible hand of Providence, ever secretly working good out of evil, again to mould into symmetry, and replenish with new bounties for new almoners among brute creatures. Thus, to say nothing of the marvellous events in the lives of worms under its turf, or the revolutions of empires in ant-hills on its surface, the very changes of aspect which a mountain assumes in the course of an existence coeval with the sun and moon, though so slow as to be perceptible only by comparisons made at intervals of ages, prove that mutability furnishes inexhaustible materials for instruction and entertainment, in the stories which she tells, and the morals which she teaches, to those who can understand the language wherein she speaks to man,bimself the most fickle of beings under her dominion."-(Vol. I. p. 273.) - REVIEW. - Byzantium, a Dramatic Poem. By E. R. Poole, Student of the Inner Temple. 8vo. boards. pp. 140. Letts, Cornhill. We understand the present poem to have been written in competition with others for the premium of the Royal Literary Society. Certainly it would have been "difficult to adduce a subject more pregnant with interest to the contemplative mind," than the fall of the Eastern empire; especially on contrasting the present degradation, consequent upon that event, with the high state of civilization and splendour in which the Eastern emperors held their sway :-a contrast the more striking, when we reflect on the courtesy which formerly existed towards all nations in those very countries, where now to be a stranger, and especially if a Christian, is to be the subject of nothing but contempt and insult from those in power. Nor is a poem of this kind less engaging, as bringing before the mind, by anticipation, the probable benefits which may accrue to that interesting portion of Europe, in consequence of the struggle for independence now making by the oppressed Greeks; not that we find any, the most distant allusion, to this circumstance in the poem, though the author feelingly reflects upon it in the preface. As Mr. Poole professes to follow the narrative of Gibbon, we need not be very minute in our analysis of his production, which, in fact, presents but a scanty description of the siege; a siege which might have been rendered more interesting by a few additional incidents, and by shortening some of the speeches of Theodosia, as well as many of the choral chants which occur in the drama. The poem is founded on some of the most remarkable events authenticated by history, in the besieging of Constantinople, or Byzantium, in May, 1453, by Mohamed II.; which, awful as its consequence was to the Eastern empire, was instrumental to the spread of learning and science in the darker regions of Western Europe, by_causing a migration of the learned to Rome, and gradually bringing about the revival of literature under the patronage of the house of Medicis. The commencement of the drama is on the evening of preparation for the attack, But and the first scene discloses the Mufti | speeches seem as much too peevish, paying their adorations to the High- as the daughter's are too sage. est, when Mohammed proclaims ho- the principal merit of this piece apnour and reward to the warrior who pears most obvious to us in the latter shall first attain the summit of a tower scenes. At a meeting of the Greek in view, and tear down the Christian chiefs in the palace of Constantine at standard; and then denounces the night, before the battle, are introduced city to utter destruction, concluding two other characters, Lucas Notaras with an incitement truly and unfail- and Justiniani-both of them turbuingly characteristic of a Mussulman: lent heroes. The soliloquy of Deme"Then be it yours to revel in the blush trius does credit to the author; and Of earthly beauty, far more exquisite the following truth, though not new, Than ever yet hath blest a Moslem's love." is well expressed :Then follows a chorus of dervises also in true character, as inciting the Turkish soldiers to slaughter without mercy those who profess a different creed. The next scene changes to the Greek quarters; and commences with an interview between Theodosia, the daughter of Phantze, (a Greek soldier and historian,) and Seleem, the son of Khaleel, (the prime vizier,) of course professing a religious creed of an opposite tendency. In their interview we meet with some affecting sentiments, and well-written passages. We next come to the assembly of the Greek chiefs and Constantine, which opens with an invocation to Heaven for a blessing on the Christian cause, by the Patriarch, accompanied with chantings of the priests; and here we are pleased with the spirit of mildness in their hymns, which appears in contrast to the ceremony in the Turkish camp. The Patriarch proceeds to administer the sacrament to Constantine, &c. as a preparation for battle, and the probably fatal issue of it; ending with another invocation, in which, among many impressive passages, we find the following: "Hear us, Lord of conquest! now Next follows an interview on the ramparts between Phrantze and Demetrius, the emperor's brother, which latter character the author seems to have chosen for the display of his best passages. An interview follows between Phrantze and his daughter Theodosia; in which the father's Death is but a pass For spirits from this stormy world of woe He is interrupted in his musings by The superstitious musings of the Roman sentinels are well inserted; and one of them gives a faithful picture of what we may suppose to be the feelings of the populace of a besieged city-not yet having felt the awful visitation: " : As I came Here from the walls, I mix'd insensibly All had congregated there by chance, Each felt in silent dread the near approach Another Roman: Nor falsely felt; We have only room to observe, that we give the author credit for the truth with which he has described the power of bigotry over the mind, in the interview between Seleem and his father, when Seleem confesses his passion for Theodosia-a Christian. The father, urging his son to unburden to him the secret that oppresses his soul, conjures him, with every protestation of parental affection, no longer to conceal his grief;—that, to see him happy he would e'en exchange The lowest menial's garb-Gueber's attire, But when Seleem at last says,— The daughter of a Christian chief,”— We have various incidents of the siege, as it draws to its awful close: but the author does not give us such a grand winding up as might have been expected. The flight of Justiniani of course could not be passed over in silence, but the mind recurs to the more eloquent Gibbon for an account of that event. The author concludes his drama with a final interview between Seleem and Theodosia, whose mind ".. Doth wander o'er a boundless space Turning from the excellencies to the imperfections of this poem, we cannot but admit, that its blemishes are numerous; but this we attribute to the author's carelessness rather than to his want of judgment. There are metrical blunders in abundance; and the punctuation, for which it is now the fashion to call the printer to account, is wretched, though the sheets are beautifully printed. How does the author wish us to read such lines as these, in Iambic metre?— or this?— ‹ Has grown familiar with the view."-p. 36. and many others. In p. 45, there is a confused figure about the vampyre; and in p. 71, another about the vulture,— "Eyeing lustfully his tortur'd prey, growing fresh-" In short, we so fully perceive the author's ability to do better, that we recommend him to revise his work carefully we wish he may have a second impression of it; and we venture to predict that it will be well received, even in these fastidious times. REVIEW.-Ellen Gray; or, the Dead Maiden's Curse, a Poem. By the late Dr. Archibald Macleod. pp. 40. 1823. "Omnibus umbra locis adero!"-VIRG. IT is very possible for a good poet to inspire his readers, in spite of prejudice.-Who can read Lalla Rhook, or the Loves of the Angels, without occasionally being transported to the very summit of blissful romance? notwithstanding our morality is endangered at every step; and the poet is no less conscious of his ascendency over our inclinations. The same remark holds good with respect to Byron. The Corsair, the Bride of Abydos, and others of his productions, though beautiful in poetry, have on all sides received the most dreadful imprecations on the score of religion: yet where is the mind imbued with the romance of poetry, and fettered with the wild but pleasurable emotion of inspiring fancy, although conscious of the danger, that has not received the most indefinable gratification from these bardic productions. Although the rod of criticism has not been spared, and the hand of censure has borne so heavily, as to make them, we should think, "hide"--we will not say "their diminished heads"-but heads of any standard, where brilliant talent can be said to centre: still they write, regardless of denunciation; re "Strange forms, varied shapes, fortunes pranks gardless of the consequences, civil or that smile!"-p. 17. moral; and, lamentable as it may appear, curiosity vies with their imperwhich line is neither "sound nor fections, and their works are sought sense;" or this?— after with the most ungovernable But these remarks we leave with our readers, while we turn "And danced with aërials to the music of the eagerness. spheres!"-p. 68. Σ |