Till our mortality predominates, And men are what they name not to themselves, And trust not to each other. Hark! the note. [The shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard. The natural music of the mountain reedFor here the patriarchal days are not A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air, Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd; My soul would drink those echoes!-Oh, that I were he viewless spirit of a lovely sound, A living voice, a breathing harmony, A bodiless enjoyment-born and dying And spirit patient, pious, proud and free; The following scene is one of the most poetical and most sweetly written in the poem. There is a still and delicious witchery in the tranquillity and seclusion of the place, With the blest tone which made me!"-pp. 20-22. | and the celestial beauty of the Being whe At this period of his soliloquy, he is de. scried by a Chamois hunter, who overhears its continuance. To be thus Grey-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines, Ye topling crags of ice! Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down Just as he is about to spring from the cliff, he is seized by the hunter, who forces him away from the dangerous place in the midst of the rising tempest. In the second act, we find him in the cottage of this peasant, and in a still wilder state of disorder. His host offers him wine; but, upon looking at the cup, he exclaims "Away, away! there's blood upon the brim! Will it then never never sink in the earth? C. Hun. What dost thou mean? thy senses wander from thee. Man. I say 'tis blood-my blood! the pure warm stream Which ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours C. Hun. Man of strange words, and some halfmaddening sin, &c. Man. Think'st thou existence doth depend on It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine (time? Have made my days and nights imperishable, Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore, Innumerable atoms; and one desert, Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break, But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks, Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness. C. Hun. Alas! he's mad-but yet I must not leave him. reveals herself in the midst of these visible enchantments. In a deep valley among the mountains, Manfred appears alone before a lofty cataract, pealing in the quiet sunshine down the still and everlasting rocks; and says "It is not noon-the sunbow's rays still arch [He takes some of the water into the palm of his hand, and flings it in the air, muttering the adjuration. After a pause, the WITCH OF THE ALPS rises beneath the arch of the sunbow of the torrent.] Man. Beautiful Spirit! with thy hair of light, And dazzling eyes of glory! in whose form The charms of Earth's least-mortal daughters grow To an unearthly stature, in an essence Of purer elements; while the hues of youth,Carnation'd like a sleeping infant's cheek, Rock'd by the beating of her mother's heart, Or the rose tints, which summer's twilight leaves Upon the lofty glacier's virgin snow, The blush of earth embracing with her heaven,- I know thee, and the Powers which give thee power! I have expected this what wouldst thou with me? Man. To look upon thy beauty!-nothing further."-pp. 31, 32. There is something exquisitely beautiful, to our taste, in all this passage; and both the apparition and the dialogue are so managed, that the sense of their improbability is swal lowed up in that of their beauty; and, without actually believing that such spirits exist or communicate themselves, we feel for the moment as if we stood in their presence. What follows, though extremely powerful, | Made him a thing, which I, who pity not. and more laboured in the wri writing, has less charm for us. He tells his celestial auditor the brief story of his misfortune; and when he mentions the death of the only being he nad ever loved, the beauteous Spirit breaks in with her superhuman pride. "And for this A being of the race thou dost despise, [hour Man. Daughter of Air! I tell thee, since that But peopled with the Furies!-I have gnash'd The third scene is the boldest in the exhibition of supernatural persons. The three Destinies and Nemesis meet, at midnight, on the top of the Alps, on their way to the hall of Arimanes, and sing strange ditties to the moon, of their mischiefs wr wrought among men. Nemesis being rather late, thus apologizes for keeping them waiting. I was detain'd repairing shattered thrones, And making them repent their own revenge; Yet pardon those who pity. He is mine, pp. 47, 48. At his desire, the ghost of his beloved As tarte is then called up, and appears-but re fuses to speak at the command of the Powera who have raised her, till Manfred breaks out into this passionate and agonising address. "Hear me, hear me Astarte! my beloved! speak to me! I know not what I ask, nor what I seek: And I would hear yet once, before I perish, voice which was music. -Speak to me! Startled the slumbering birds from the hush'd And woke the mountain wolves, and made the Phantom of Astarte. Manfred! Say on, say on [ills. Say, shall we meet again ? This we think is out of place at least, if we I live but in the sound-it is thy voice! Prince of the Powers invisible! This man Which clogs the etherial essence, have been such [being, This is not all; -the passions, attributes Have pierced his heart; and in their consequence [The Spirit of ASTARTE disappears. Nem. She's gone, and will not be recalled." pp. 50-52. The last act, though in many passages very beautifully written, seems to us less powerful. It passes altogether in Manfred's castle, and is chiefly occupied in two long conversations between him and a holy abbot, who comes to exhort and absolve him, and whose counsel he repels with the most reverent gentleness, and but few bursts of dignity and pride. The following passages are full of poetry and feeling. "Ay-father! I have had those earthly visions. (Which casts up misty columns that become Clouds raining from the re-ascended skies), Lies low but mighty still. But this is past! My thoughts mistook themselves. Abbott. And why not live and act with other men? The red-hot breath of the most lone Simoom, pp. 59, 60. There is also a fine address to the setting sun-aud a singular miscellaneous soliloquy, in which one of the author's Roman recollections is brought in, we must say somewhat annaturally. "The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Than that of man; and in her starry shade I learn'd the language of another world! Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome; And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon! upon pp. 68, 69. In his dying hour he is beset with Demons, who pretend to claim him as their forfeit; but he indignantly and victoriously disputes their claim, and asserts freedom their thraldom. "Must crimes be punish'd but by other crimes, in this poem;-but it is undoubtedly a work of genius and originality. Its worst fault, perhaps, is, that it fatigues and overawes u by the uniformity of its terror and solemnity. Another is the painful and offensive nature of the circumstance on which its distress is ultimately founded. It all springs from the disappointment or fatal issue of an incestuous passion; and incest, according to our moders ideas for it was otherwise in antiquity-is not a thing to be at all brought before the imagination. The lyrical songs of the Spirits are too long; and not all excellent. There is something of pedantry in them now and then; and even Manfred deals in classical allusions a little too much. If we were to consider it as a proper drama, or even as a finished poem, we should be obliged to add, that it is far too indistinct and unsatisfactory. But this we take to be according to the design and conception of the author. He contemplated but a dim and magnificent sketch of a subject which did not admit of a more acerate drawing, or more brilliant colouring. Its obscurity is a part of its grandeur; and the darkness that rests upon it, and the smoky distance in which it is lost, are all devices to increase its majesty, to stimulate our curiosity, and to impress us with deeper awe. It is suggested, in an ingenious paper, in a late Number of the Edinburgh Magazine, that the general conception of this piece, and much of what is excellent in the manner of its execution, have been borrowed from "the Tragical History of Dr. Faustus" of Marlowe; and a variety of passages are quoted, which the author considers as similar, and, in many respects, superior to others in the poem before us. We cannot agree in the general terms of this conclusion;-but there is, no doubt, a certain resemblance, both in some of the topics that are suggested, and in the cast of the diction in which they are expressed. Thus, to induce Faustus to persist in his unlawful studies, he is told that the Spirits of the Elements will serve him "Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, Shadowing more beauty in their ayrie browes the breasts of the Queene o. Love." And again, when the amorous sorcerer com mands Helen of Troy to be revived, as his paramour, he addresses her, on her first appearance, in these rapturous lines "Was this the face that launcht a thousand ships, Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not More lovely than the monarch of the skyes Born from the knowledge of its own desert. O! thou art fairer than the evening ayre, Clad in the beauty of a thousand starres; In wanton Arethusa's azure arms!" The catastrophe, too, is bewailed in verses of great elegance and classical beauty. "Cut is the branch that might have growne full And burned is Apollo's laurel bough [straight That sometime grew within this learned man. Faustus is gone?-regard his hellish fall, But these, and many other smooth and fanciful verses in this curious old drama, prove nothing, we think, against the originality of Manfred; for there is nothing to be found there of the pride, the abstraction, and the heart-rooted misery in which that originality consists. Faustus is a vulgar sorcerer, place it much more in contrast, than in any terms of comparison, with that of his noble successor. In the tone and pitch of the composition, as well as in the character of the diction in the more solemn parts, the piece before us reminds us much more of the Prometheus of Æschylus, than of any more modern performance. The tremendous solitude of the principal person-the supernatural beings with whom alone he holds communion tempted to sell his soul to the Devil for the -the guilt-the firmness-the misery-are ordinary price of sensual pleasure, and earthly all points of resemblance, to which the power and glory and who shrinks and shud- grandeur of the poetic imagery only gives a more striking effect. The chief differences are, that the subject of the Greek poet was sanctified and exalted by the established belief of his country; and that his terrors are nowhere tempered with the sweetness which breathes from so many passages of his Eng ders in agony when the forfeit comes to be 3 : (January, 1809.) Reliques of ROBERT BURNS, consisting chiefly of Original Letters, Poems, and Critical Observations on Scottish Songs. Collected and published by R. H. CROMEK. 8vo. pp. 450 London: 1808. as much scholarship, in short, we imagine, as Shakespeare; and far better models to form his ear to harmony, and train his fancy to graceful invention. BURNS IS certainly by far the greatest of our childhood; and, co-operating with the solitude poetical prodigies-from Stephen Duck down of his rural occupations, were sufficient to to Thomas Dermody. They are forgotten rouse his ardent and ambitious mind to the already; or only remembered for derision. love and the practice of poetry. He had about But the name of Burns, if we are not mistaken, has not yet "gathered all its fame;" and will endure long after those circumstances are forgotten which contributed to its first notoriety. So much indeed are we impressed with a sense of his merits, that we cannot help thinking it a derogation from them to consider him as a prodigy at all; and are convinced that he will never be rightly estimated as a poet, till that vulgar wonder be entirely We ventured, on a former occasion, to say something of the effects of regular education, and of the general diffusion of literature, in repressing the vigour and originality of all kinds of mental exertion. That speculation was perhaps carried somewhat too far; but been a ploughman. It is true, no doubt, that its application to poetry. Among well eduhe was born in an humble station; and that cated people, the standard writers of this much of his early life was devoted to severe description are at once so venerated and so labour, and to the society of his fellow-labour- familiar, that it is thought equally impossible But he was not himself either unedu- to rival them, as to write verses without atcated or illiterate; and was placed in a situa-tempting it. If there be one degree of fame tion more favourable, perhaps, to the develop- which excites emulation, there is another ment of great poetical talents, than any other which leads to despair: Nor can we conceive which could have been assigned him. He any one less likely to be added to the short was taught, at a very early age, to read and list of original poets, than a young man of fine repressed which was raised on his having if the paradox have proof any where, it is in ers. fancy and delicate taste, who has acquired a high relish for poetry, by perusing the most celebrated writers, and conversing wit: the most intelligent judges. The head of such a person is filled, of course, with all the splendid passages of ancient and modern authors, and with the fine and fastidious remarks which have been made even on those passages. When he turns his eyes, therefore, on his own conceptions or designs, they can scarce. ly fail to appear rude and contemptible. He is perpetually haunted and depressed by the ideal presence of those great masters, and write; and soon after acquired a competent knowledge of French, together with the elements of Latin and Geometry. His taste for reading was encouraged by his parents and many of his associates; and, before he had ever composed a single stanza, he was not only familiar with many prose writers, but far more intimately acquainted with Pope, Shakespeare, and Thomson, than nine tenths of the youth that now leave our schools for the university. Those authors, indeed, with some old collections of songs, and the lives of Hannibal and of Sir William Wallace, were bis babitual study from the first days of his | their exacting critics. He is aware to what comparisons his productions wil be subjected | stage of their history, and in a period con among his own friends and associates; and paratively rude and unlettered. Homer wen recollects the derision with which so many forth, like the morning star, before the dawr rash adventurers have been chased back to their obscurity. Thus, the merit of his great predecessors chills, instead of encouraging his ardour; and the illustrious names which have already reached to the summit of excellence, act like the tall and spreading trees of the forest, which overshadow and strangle the saplings which may have struck root in the soil below and afford efficient shelter to nothing but creepers and parasites. There is, no doubt, in some few individuals, "that strong divinity of soul"-that decided and irresistible vocation to glory, which, in spite of all these obstructions, calls out, perhaps once or twice in a century, a bold and original poet from the herd of scholars and academical literati. But the natural tendency of their studies, and by far their most common effect, is to repress originality, and discourage enterprise; and either to change those whom nature meant for poets, into mere read ers of poetry, or to bring them out in the form of witty parodists, or ingenious imitators. Independent of the reasons which have been already suggested, it will perhaps be found, too, that necessity is the mother of invention, in this as well as in the more vulgar arts; or, at least, that inventive genius will frequently slumber in inaction, where the preceding ingenuity has in part supplied the wants of the owner. A solitary and uninstructed man, with lively feelings and an inflammable imagination, will often be irresistibly led to exercise those gifts, and to occupy and relieve his mind in poetical composition: But if his education, his reading, and his society supply him with an abundant store of images and emotions, he will probably think but little of those internal resources, and feed his mind contentedly with what has been provided by the industry of others. To say nothing, therefore, of the distractions and the dissipation of mind that belong to the commerce of the world, nor of the cares of minute accuracy and high finishing which are imposed on the professed scholar, there seem to be deeper reasons for the separation of originality and accomplishment; and for the partiality which has led poetry to choose almost all her prime favourites among the recluse and uninstructed. A youth of quick parts, in short, and creative fancy-with just so much reading as to guide his ambition, and roughhew his notions of excellence-if his lot be thrown in humble retirement, where he has no reputation to lose, and where he can easily hope to excel all that he sees around him, is much more likely, we think, to give himself up to poetry, and to train himself to habits of invention, than if he had been encumbered by the pretended helps of extended study and literary society. of literature in Greece, and almost all the great and sublime poets of modern Europe are already between two and three hundred years old. Since that time, although books and readers, and opportunities of reading, are multiplied a a thousand fold, we have improved chiefly in point and terseness of expression, in the art of raillery, and in clearness and simplicity of thought. Force, richness, and variety of invention, are now at least as rare as ever. But the literature and refinement of the age does not exist at all for a rustic and illiterate individual; and, consequently, the present time is to him what the rude times of old were to the vigorous writers which adorned them. But though, for these and for other reasons, we can see no propriety in regarding the poetry of Burns chiefly as the wonderful wor of a peasant, and thus admiring it much in the same way as if it had been written with his toes; yet there are peculiarities in Lis works which remind us of the lowness of his origin, and faults for which the defects of his education afford an obvious cause, if not a legitimate apology. In forming a correct es timate of these works, it is necessary to tase into account those peculiarities. The first is, the undiciplined harshness and acrimony of his invective. The great boast of polished life is the delicacy, and even the generosity of its hostility-that quality which is still the characteristic, as it furnishes the denomination, of a gentleman-that principle which forbids us to attack the defenceless, to strike the fallen, or to mangle the slain-and enjoins us, in forging the shafts of satire, to increase the polish exactly as we add to their keenness or their weight. For this, as well as for other things, we are indebted to chivalry; and of this Burns had none. His ingenious and amiable biographer has spoken repeatedly in praise of his talents for satirewe think, with a most unhappy partiality. His epigrams and lampoons appear to us. one and all, unworthy of him; offensive from their extreme coarseness and violence-and contemptible from their want of wit or brilliancy. They seem to have been written, not out of playful malice or virtuous indignation, but out of fierce and ungovernable anger. His whole raillery consists in railing; and his satirical vein displays itself chiefly in calling names and in swearing. We say this mainly with a reference to his personalities. In many of his more general representations of life and manners, there is no doubt much that may be called satirical, mixed up with admirable humour, and description of inimitable vivacity. There is a similar want of polish, or at least of respectfulness, in the general tone of his gallantry. He has written with more passion, perhaps, and more variety of natural feeling, If these observations should fail to strike of themselves, they may perhaps derive ad- on the subject of love, than any other poet ditional weight from considering the very re- whatever-but with a fervour that is somemarkable fact, that almost all the great poets times indelicate, and seldom accommodated of every country have appeared in an early to the timidity and "sweet austere com |