• Valois. Didft thou not fave me from the abyss of woe, Bid wreaths of flowers crown the thorns of fate, Replenish each deficiency of Nature,

And why does Nature

And bless me with delight, and joy, and plenty?
Chaubert. And what is wealth?
spread

The lot of human life fo different?

Why give to one a furplus of enjoyment,
But to diffuse it where her scant fupply

Has made it wanting; but to wake the flame
Of warm benevolence and focial love?

Thus to fupply her inequalities,

And be ourselves the means of others bleffings?

Of

• Valois. Haft thou not taken from the haggard lap
poverty, and rescued from his fate

The youthful heir of my afflictions,

That follow'd on fo early on my years?

Haft thou not brought him up beneath thy care,

Been his preferver, teacher, father, friend?

Chaubert. And, Valois, haft not thou by far o'erpaid

Each petty service fortune help'd me do thee?

"Tis to thy friendship, and that fympathy
Of fouls which joins each action of our lives;
I owe my highest joys.'-

The author obferves, wherever he could do it with propriety, he has availed himself of the language and characteristic events of the original. But, among fome others, he wishes to point out as his own the relation of the attempt to poifon Chaubert

in the speech of Valois preceding the last.' We shall leave our readers to determine whether this might not have been omitted without injury to the piece:

1

Valois. (To Chaubert.) Thou know'st not half-thank
Heav'n when thou know'ft,

For Heav'n alone it was preferv'd thy life-
Doft thou not well remember on the morn,

The fatal morn that faw, and feal'd our crime;

How, as thou lifted'ft to thy lips the cup,

Thy fav'rite dog, then jumping on thy knees,

Threw down the draught?-O! 'twas a pois'nous draught
That we'ad prepar'd for thee;-and then thou beat'st

The cur for faving of thy life.'

The eking out the laft line by the particle of, and the elipfis of we'ad, are large poetical licences for one fpeech. There are a few grammatical errors we fhall not so easily pass over should

*The Diary of Chaubert, published in Mr. Cumberland's Journal.

0 2

this

this juvenile dramatist again call for mercy. The following are too glaring not to be taken notice of at present:

For what were life,

A tedious, dull, and frightful pilgrimage
When undertook alone.'-

Chaubert and him are leagued in bonds of union.' Candour obliges us to fuppose this last an error of the prefs; but it is hardly excufeable any way.

ART. XVI. The Fane of the Druids; a Poem. Book the Second. Comprehending an Account of the Origin, Progrefs, and Establishment of Society in North-Britain. By the Author of the First Book. 4to. 2s. Murray. London, 1789.

IN

N our Review for June 1787 appears our account of the first book of this poem. The author continues his labours in the book now before us with equal fuccefs. Having, in the former publication, given (all that could be given) the most probable account of the druidical tenets and government, he, in the prefent work, relates the fall of that race, and the extinction of their government and power by the irruptions of the Scandinavian tribes. He marks the fubfequent confequence of the bards in every tranfaction of that early period, traces the formation of clans, paints the manners of the predatory ftate of fociety, delineates the gradual advancement of civilifation by the introduction of agriculture, commerce, and the other arts which humanife mankind, and, laftly, completes the picture by defcribing the dawn of science, and characterising fome of the early Scottish poets and hiftorians.

A pleasing vein of poetry appears in the following description of the fall of the druids; and the numbers are peculiarly harmonious :

Long in the wilds of Caledonia's land

The Druid rulers held fupreme command;
Long o'er a nation ruled with temperate fway,

And faw their happy fons with joy obey.

Even when the world's great fovereigns doom'd their fall,
And crush'd by ftern decrees th' imperious Gaul,

Beneath her spreading oaks, fecure from harm,

Thy fons, Britannia, lived, nor felt alarm:
Her northern race along the peaceful shore
Heard but the torrent dafh, and ocean roar.

'Twas paft. Revolving ages fwept away Race after race, fucceffive in decay.

A fiercer

A fiercer band appear'd, whofe hands defaced
The peaceful groves, and laid the nation waste:
A tribe commiffion'd by an angry God,
From Scandinavian deferts rush'd abroad;
In fearch of foreign regions fpread afar,
A lawless crowd, that menaced spoil and war.
To Caledonia's coaft they held their courfe,
An hoft unmatch'd in number as in force;
There, like fome mighty river fwell'd with rain,
Now rag'd the naked Pict or barbarous Dane;
Blood-thirsty crew, to furious battle bred,

That joy'd in flaughter, and in heaps of dead!
Nought ftay'd their hands, in horrid league combined,
Vows, fhrieks, and fuppliant prayers, were loft in wind,
Thefe o'er the ruin of their loft domain

The Druid people breathed, but breathed in vain.

Hark, yon loud crafh! the cleaving axe defcends;

And lo, the monarch of the woodland bends,

From his old manfion caft! Supine he lies,
In age defaced, the fierce invader's prize;
On his own ground he falls, exposed and bare;
Shorn is his trunk, his leaves are lost in air.

Yet thefe fo fell, fo ruthless; as they eyed
The Fane in filence felt their rage fubfide;
They raised their hands, but trembled at the view,
Grew tame, and wond'ring at themfelves, withdrew.
• Mean time the Druid Priests, despised, o'erthrown,
As ftrangers roam'd o'er regions once their own;
Deep in the folitary vales they stray'd,

Or flept beneath the mountain's cheerlefs fhade;
Or fought, their fate in anguish to deplore,
Their ancient feats, the feats of joy no more.
A few, the reliques of the mighty dead,

Crept from their caverns; weak, oppress'd, dismay’d.
No grove around the facred mansion rofe,
No dark brown woods, or bowers of deep repose;
No throng with reverence bow'd before the fhrine,
Nor virgin's fix'd eye fcann'd the Power divine:
Arm'd with keen faulchions, and resolved on death,
A barbarous people rush'd to war beneath;
War was their trade, and his the first reward,
Whofe ruthless heart in battle greatly dared;
Whofe arm, if carnage ftain'd the whirling fpear,
Knew no diftinction in its mad career,
But ever bent on fome difaftrous end,

Whelm'd in wide havock, brother, father, friend:
These they beheld, then with averted gaze

Sunk in their vales, and dream'd of ancient days.'

The following encomium on Wallace is well conceived, and expressed with energy:

O 3

. O glorious

O glorious chief! renown'd in every fight,
Thou brave defender of thy country's right!
Alike in virtuous thought and action great,
In all a Roman, but in profperous fate!
Bold fon of Liberty, whofe mighty hand
Burst, nobly burst oppreffion's iron band!
Alone fuperior to thy fate's decree,

Alone amidst a conquer'd nation free.'

The author purposes to complete his plan in a third book, in which he means to give the progress of society in Scotland to the present times; to exhibit its prefent flourithing fituation in commerce, arts, literature, &c. and to affign the caufes which have produced so happy an effect.

In the notes which accompany this work, much good sense, and confiderable erudition, are difplayed. The author does not, however, enter upon the difputed facts of early Scottish history, as a critical investigation of that matter did not belong to his fubject, and as the commonly-received opinion fully answered his purpose.

FOREIGN LITERATURE.

ART. XVII. Voyage de jeune Anacharfis en Grèce, dans le Milieu du Quatrième Siècle avant l'ère Vulgaire. 8vo. 7 vols.-There is also a Quarto Edition.

ART. XVII. Travels of young Anacharfis into Greece, &c. 8vo, 7 vols.

[ Concluded. ]

ANACHARSIS having pafled the most valuable years of his

life in travelling, chiefly in Greece, had taken care to collect his obfervations of whatever merited attention. He had been per-, fonally acquainted with Epaminondas, Phocion,, Xenophon, Plato, Ariftotle, Demofthenes, and other great men of that age, and had affociated with many Athenians who had known Sophocles, Euripides, Ariftophanes, Thucydides, Socrates, Zeuxis, and Parrhafius. While he was in Greece, the great works of Praxitiles, of Euphranor, and of Pamphilus, made their appearance, and likewife the firft effays of Apelles and of Protogenes. On his arrival he had found Philip of Macedon living with Epaminondas, and imbibing his fpirit; he faw him afcend the throne of Macedonia; he was a fpectator of the expiring glory of Greece, and of the revolution by which its states

were

were fubverted. As foon as the battle of Cheronea had rendered Philip the mafter of the Grecians, Anacharfis returned to Scythia, where he arranged his obfervations, and wrote an account of his travels for the use of his friends.、

It is in this pleafing fhape that the Abbé Barthelemy prefents us with the picture of Greece, drawn from the best authorities, and with the ftricteft hiftorical truth. The era he has chosen to bring under the immediate view of his traveller is that in which the ftates were at the height of their glory, yet at laft fell under the dominion of Philip; but Anacharfis gives a preceding view of Greece from the remotest times to the overthrow of Athens by Lyfander; which, that he might not be interrupted in the narrative of his own travels, he throws into an introductory volume.

Vol. I. Having mentioned the favage ftate of Greece, he divides the introduction into two parts. The first part contains the hiftory of the fabulous, or heroic ages, reflections upon them, and on the intellectual improvement of the Grecians. On the fubject of religion he fays, This irregular fyftem inculcated a fmall number of tenets neceffary to the peace of men in fociety; the existence of the gods, the immortality of the foul, rewards for virtue, punishments for vice; it ordained ceremo nies that might contribute to establish thefe truths; festivals and myfteries: to the ftatefiman it prefented a powerful engine, by which he might turn the ignorance and credulity of the people to advantage; oracles, with the art of augurers and foothfayers; in fhort, it left every one at liberty to investigate the ancient traditions, and to be continually loading the hiftory and genealogy of the gods with fome new legend. So that the imagination, having the power of creating facts, and of altering by fupernatural pretenfions thofe that were al'ready known, conftantly gave a fpirit of the marvellous to all their representations, that spirit fo contemptible in the fight of wife men, so captivating to infants and infant nations. A traveller entertaining his hofts, a father his children, or a finger employed to amufe his fovereign, formed the plots of their 'ftories, which were unravelled by the intervention of the gods; ' and the system of religion became infenfibly a system of fictions and of poetry-'

The Trojan war having had its origin in the heroic ages, fixes the attention of Anacharfis upon Homer, of whom, in concluding the first part of the introduction, he draws an exquifite picture, which he concludes in this manner: Let those who can refift the beauties of Homer grow dull over his defects, for why conceal it? he often repofes, and fometimes he flumbers; but his repofe is like that of the eagle, who, after

O 4

having