plaint. Whenever his debility permitted him to converse, the theme was his adored child. Were my heart opened' said he one day- you would find his name inscribed in its core. In the winning of my Alexis I lost health and strength, but it was the losing of him which gave me the death blow. Now that nothing more remains for me to do but to prepare for my exit, I could have wished-had I been a great man, enabled to indulge all his fancies to be carried to the spot where he lies, there to breathe my last by his beloved side: but such luxuries an outcast, a homeless wanderer must not think of. Enough for me, when my hour is at hand, to have in his gentle spirit an angel on high, to intercede with his Father in Heaven, for his mortal one departing this earth.' "The third morning after this speech, Conrad, coming in at an early hour, found not his patient, as usual, on his pillow. Anastasius had made shift to creep out of bed, and was kneeling on a chair on which rested his face. At first he seemed in a swoon:-but discerning the approach of his friend, he held out his trembling hand to him, and, trying to raise his head, faintly cried out,—' Heaven takes pity at last. Thanks, O thanks for all your goodness!'—and immediately relapsed. After a second interval of apparent absence, a second fit of momentary consciousness followed, when Conrad stooping, heard the poor sufferer utter, but in a voice almost extinct,'O my Alexis, I come!' and immediately saw his head fall forward again. Conrad now tried to lift him into bed, in order that he might be more at ease. There was no occasion: Anastasis was no more. "His body, laid out-by those who owed him their restoration to comfort and affluence-in a sort of state, was by them committed to its last mansion with somewhat more solemnity than he had desired. They inherited half his property: the other half had been bequeathed to the poor of the place; and, though staunch Roman Catholics, its inhabitants, it is said, still bless the memory of the young Greek." The following Note we take to be a satire by the author on the enthus a tic paternal feelings of his hero: "The editor acknowledges that the effect produced by the loss of his child on a man like Anastasius, seemed to him-even allowing for the peculiarity of the adventurer's situation—somewhat improbable, until in Mari-' ner's account of Finow, king of the Tonga islands, he found what power the feelings of nature will sometimes, among semi-barbarous nations, retain even over minds in other respects ferocious and pitiless." Such are the memoirs of a Greek, which extend to no less than 1224 closely printed pages. When we saw the type, the inadequacy occurred to us of the power of human genius to keep us awake, throughout the perusal at least without our aiding the author by avoiding an immense deal of matter utterly irrelevant. We were, therefore, little surprised to find, what we anticipated, prolixity measureless; not only in the narrative, but in discussions, reflections, recapitulations, soliloquies, and all the known means and modes of loading a story, and lengthening a book. Numerous pages of real history, inasmuch as they are to be found, in substance, in all annual registers and other chronicles, amount to positive plagiarism: but even the fiction wants interest; we get tired of the adventurer himself in the unvarying succession of his chances. The characters, it is true, arc changed, the places are shifted, but the incidents have a resem VOL. IV. NO. IV. 21 blance so essential, as to create in the reader all the ennui of repetition. We were well nigh tired of our task of framing an abstract. There is a monotony in Mahometan customs, manners, amours, and politics, fatal to the interest of any work, at least any long work, which attempts to pourtray them. Constantinople, Cairo, Bagdad, Damascus, vary locally but not morally; the surly, selfish, proud, cruel, sensual Muslemin, is the same in all. The author could not have selected a portion of this earth's surface so extended, for a series of adventures of so little variety. We think we see a grand mistake in the imagination of "Anastasius." One of the master-spirits of our time has suc ceeded in reaping from one and the same field, the most popular poems and the most fascinating novels of the present age. But every field is not so convertible; to say nothing of the power of every cultivator. The genius we have alluded to would have been the last to fall into such an error as is here exemplified. Mahometans, in a poet's hands, are poetical personages; for the tales of the Arabian Nights are as essentially poems as the Giaour and the Corsair; but an analysis, in a novel, of the every-day of the dull Moslemin, of the unvarying uniformity of kiasks and harems, is insupportable; and the evil is only aggravated by changing about among the Suleimans and Osmans and Achmets, of Europe, Africa, and Asia, whose manners present no variety, whose very vices, tyrannies, and crimes, are stamped for ever with a disgusting identity. No! a Cairo novel will not do. A Byron as little as a Scott would have dreamed of writing one; and that Byron was not the author of that before us, we had another demonstration-the length of its details. He would have concentrated the whole in one third of the space, and thereby incalculably increased its elasticity. Of the prose of "Anastasius" he could not be guilty, for its very best passages are not nearly up to his pitch. But we were be ginning to be very patient in our ignorance; and to think an indulgent public were benefiting by the exercise of the same vir tue, when the appearance of a second edition dispelled all suspense, by adducing Mr. Thomas Hope as the responsible personage. In brief, then, of "Anastasius" we conclude, that if it is the book of the day, it is because there is for the time no other; but it will not take its place among standard novels. Its merits as a fable are too slender for the mere lovers of story, even were it divested of its didactic details ;-and its passages of eloquenceof pathos-or of humour, are neither of the value nor the num ber to tempt to a second perusal that other class of readers who *This gentleman has acknowledged Anastasius. care less for the incidents than the sentiments of the composition: But one of its qualities, to the credit of the age, is alone sufficient to lay it on the shelf-its impurity. This is an absolute blemish; unremoved by the poetical justice, ample though it be, which punishes the impure, and morally absolves the author; and which must for ever unfit for common use the work which it taints, as long as genius, in its more exalted sphere, and nobler action, shall continue to enlighten and delight without contaminating mankind. ART. V. The Angel of the World, an Arabian Tale: Sebastian, a Spanish Tale; with other Poems. By the Rev. GEORGE · CROLY, A.M. London, John Warren, 1520. Pp. 196. . 8vo. We shall not pretend to decide whether the increasing relish for works of imaginative power, and so the increased demand has proved the cause, or merely been the consequence why the poets of our times should stand so pre-eminently distinguished, and their productions appear more numerous and brilliant than during, perhaps, any former period of our literature. Those who delight in the noblest efforts of human intellect, may congratulate themselves that they should live in an age almost unexampled for the fertility, as well as the grandeur and perfection with which these efforts have been produced. Besides the great and exalted names who hold the first and most conspicuous rank among the followers of the muses, there are others," sons of promise," rising to distinction, and to whom we may confidently look, as worthy companions, or, if so it must, honourable successors to their present ennobled brethren.. Of these there are few we should sooner mention as more likely to fulfil such expectations than the gentleman before us. He is now pretty generally known as the author of an anonymous poem, " Paris," which gained, as it deserved, a welcome and flattering reception. 66 Unless some of our greatest living poets should venture on the field of dramatic composition, we know pretty well what may be expected in future of one and all of them. We shall be satisfied if Wordsworth and Campbell sustain the well earned honours which they presently enjoy. We would hope better, if possible, of Southey, Scott, and Moore. Byron alone, we think, has not exerted all his powers; and we trust for receiving still higher and more enduring works, notwithstanding what he has al ready been privileged to accomplish. From the school, which reckons the author of Rimini as their head and master, we confess our hopes are not very sanguine. While they mistake quaintness of language, and the violation of all poetical licence, for originality, what is to be expected? That with due exertion, and well schemed manoeuvring, they will contrive to secure a limited share of praise and approbation, re-echoed till it becomes ludicrous, we doubt not; but certainly we never hope to see them numbered with the great and unobscured names which adorn our literature, though of some of the members of this misguided band, (which is more numerous than is generally conceiv ed,) our wish would be to see them ere long spurning their present trammels, and disappointing our slender expectations. Proc ter, we very recently introduced in the most flattering mannerhis prevailing weakness is imitation, and hence we have some fear that he will never exceed his first " Dramatic Scenes." Our conceptions of Rogers, Montgomery, Crabbe, and Hogg, we think, are likely never to be much staggered or discomposed, in finding them leaving the tracks they hitherto have been so very successfully pursuing. We would we had any, even the slightest hopes, of Coleridge. Joanna Baillie has attained a literary distinction to which it were difficult to find a parallel among the learned females celebrated in our history; and Felicia Hemans, as our readers cannot have forgotten, received our warmest approbation; and we have not the slightest apprehension of her falling short of our high expectations. But what Croly, Wilson, Shelly, and, we shall add, Maturin, Reynolds, and Anster, may yet achieve, we dare not say; though we trust we are not deceived in considering the works they have given us as but faint and imperfect pledges of their matured strength and vigour. And Milman has sent forth a dramatic poem worthy of the present, nay, of any other age, English literature, to which we are not without hopes of doing farther justice hereafter. Numerous and splendid as the names we have enumerated must be allowed to be, there are many, many others, though less known, and therefore less appreciated, who have concurred in establishing the claims of the living poets to constitute one of the brightest and most imposing constella tions of genius that hath ever appeared in our horizon. "The Angel of the World," an Arabian tale, is founded on a passage in the Khoraun, wherein Mohammed, exhorting against the use of wine, relates how the angels, Haruth and Maruth, who had spoken arrogantly of their own virtue, and of man's culpability, were sent to earth to give proofs of their power to resist temptation. As the mean of enticement, Zohara descended, and appeared before them in the shape of a beautiful woman, bringing a complaint against her husband. They however withstood of her seduction until she prevailed on them to drink wine, when they gave full sway to every unlawful indulgence. The story has been differently related; yet, be it told as it may, as the present author remarks," it is one of those modifications of the His"tory of the fall of Lucifer, and the temptation in paradise, "which make up so large a portion of Asiatic mythology." Neither is this relation altogether unknown to the English reader, as Southey, in what he calls his "wild and wondrous song" of Thalaba, has taken advantage of this belief; and with equal propriety and effect has introduced the two angels, as expiating their transgressions, amid the desolate ruins of Babylon. Mr. Croly has preferred to alter the traditionary account in many respects, as the reader will be able to dis cover by the abstract we intend giving of his poem, which is written in Spenserian stanzas. The author has introduced but one angel, and to render him less excusable in failing to resist the repeated attempts on his firmness, he describes with appropriate fitness, various and imposing phenomena, as warnings against the commission of his crime. Near the commencement of the poem, we find the angel of the world enthroned within a "dome of alabaster," on the sacred mount near Damascus, after having accomplished the task enjoined on him, when sent to earth by the prophet, and impatient for the hour of dismissal. "It came at last. It came with trumpets' sounding, It came with thunders of the Atabal, And warriors' shouts, and Arab chargers' bounding, And the whole city rang with sports and soldier glee." Just at this moment, when absorbed in deep thought, having contemplated the lovely scenes surrounding him, and intending to stretch forth his wing-and spring up through the blue vault of heaven" a pilgrim clung to the pavilion's steps." By telling her tale of distress, she contrives to win the entire ascendancy over him. We do not intend spending useless words in recapitulating how this ascendancy was gained, and his firmness shaken by the Tempter's successive efforts, nor the various phenomena, introduced to heighten the pictures, which are common "to the fiery soil, and exalted atmosphere of the East:"-but shall rather extract some of the more striking stanzas, which narrate them. Her tale is soon told-when the pitying angel dismissing the enchantress with a blessing, "The weeper raised the veil; a ruby lip First dawn'd: then glow'd the young cheek's deeper hue, |