While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
That dames may listen to the same at nights;
And goblin brats of Gilpin Horner's brood
Decoy young border-nobles through the wood,
And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;
While high-born ladies in their magic cell,
Forbidding knights to read who cannot spell,
Despatch a courier to a wizard's grave,
And fight with honest men to shield a knave.
Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested haughty Marmion,

Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight,
The gibbet or the field prepared to grace;
A mighty mixture of the great and base.

congruous and absurd as the ground-work of this production. The entrance of Thundering and Lightning prologuising to Bayes' Tragedy, unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, "a stark mosstrooper," videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheepstealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction not to read, can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his own elegant phrase, “'twas his neck-verse at Hairibee," i. e. the gallows.

The biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice as fast as his master's horse, without the aid of seven-leagued boots, are chef d'œuvres in the improvement of taste. For incident we have the invisible, but by no means sparing, box on the ear bestowed on the page, and the entrance of a Knight and Charger into the castle, under the very natural disguise of a wain of hay. Marmion, the hero of the latter romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been, had he been able to read and write. The poem was manufactured for Messrs. Constable, Murray, and Miller, worshipful booksellers, in consideration of the receipt of a sum of money, and truly, considering the inspiration, it is a very creditable production. If Mr. Scott will write for hire, let him do his best for his paymasters, but not disgrace his genius, which is undoubtedly great, by a repe tition of black letter ballad imitations.

And think'st thou, SCOTT! by vain conceit perchance,
On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
Though MURRAY with his MILLER may combine
To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.
Let such forego the poet's sacred name,
Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
Low may they sink to merited contempt,
And scorn remunerate the mean attempt!
Such be their meed, such still the just reward
Of prostituted Muse and hireling bard!
For this we spurn Apollo's venal son,

And bid a long "Good night to Marmion."*

These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the bards to whom the Muse must bow:
While MILTON, DRYDEN, POPE, alike forgot,
Resign their hallow'd bays to WALTER SCOTT.
The time has been, when yet the Muse was young,
When HOMER swept the lyre, and MARO sung,
An Epic scarce ten centuries could claim,
While awe-struck nations hail'd the magic name:
The work of each immortal bard appears

The single wonder of a thousand years.f

* "Good night to Marmion"-the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion.

† As the Odyssey is so closely connected with the story of the Iliad, they may almost be classed as one grand historical poem. In alluding to Milton and Tasso, we consider the "Paradise Lost," and "Giarusalemne Liberata," as their standard efforts, since neither the "Jerusalem Conquered" of the Italian, nor the "Paradise Regained" of the English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former poems. Query: Which of Mr. Southey's will survive?

Empires have moulder'd from the face of earth,

Tongues have expir'd with those who gave them birth,
Without the glory such a strain can give,
As even in ruin bids the language live.
Not so with us, though minor bards content,
On one great work a life of labour spent;
With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,
Behold the ballad-monger SOUTHEY rise!
To him let CAMOENS, MILTON, TASSO, yield,
Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field!
First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,
The scourge of England, and the boast of France!
Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch,
Behold her statue plac'd in Glory's niche;
Her fetters burst, and just releas'd from prison,
A virgin Phoenix from her ashes risen,
Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,*
Arabia's monstrous, wild, and wonderous son;
Domdaniel's dread destroyer, who o'erthrew
More mad magicians than the world e'er knew.
Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome,
For ever reign-the rival of Tom Thumb!
Since startled metre fled before thy face,
Well wert thou doom'd the last of all thy race!
Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence,
Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
Cacique in Mexico, and prince in Wales;

* Thalaba, Mr. Southey's second poem, is written in open defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr. S. wished to produce something novel, and succeeded to a miracle. Joan of Arc was marvellous enough, but Thalaba was one of those poems which, in the words of Porson, "will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but-not till then."

Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville's, and not so true.
Oh! SOUTHEY! SOUTHEY!* cease thy varied song!
A bard may chant too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare!
A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear;
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
If still in Berkley Ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,t
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue;
"God help thee," SOUTHEY, and thy readers too.‡
Next comes the dull discipline of thy school,
That mild apostate from poetic rule,

The simple WORDSWORTH, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favourite May,

Who warns his friend to shake off toil and trouble,
And quit his books for fear of growing double:

* We beg Mr. Southey's pardon: "Madoc disdains the degraded title of Epic." See his preface. Why is Epic degraded? and by whom? Certainly the late Romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye, Ogilvie, Hole, and gentle Mrs. Cowley, have not exalted the Epic Muse: but as Mr. Southey's poem "disdains the appellation," allow us to ask-has he substituted any thing bet ter in its stead? or must he be content to rival Sir Richard Blackmore, in the quantity as well as quality of his verse?

* See the Old Woman of Berkley, a Ballad by Mr. Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub on a "high trotting horse."

The last line, "God help thee," is an evident plagiarism from the AntiJacobin to Mr. Southey, on his Dactylics:

"God help thee, silly one."-Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, page 33.

§ Lyrical Ballads, page 4-"The Tables Turned." Stanza 1.

"Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks,

Why all this toil and trouble?

Up, up, my friend, and quit your books,

Or surely you'll grow double,"

Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose,
Convincing all by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose insane;

And Christmas stories tortur'd into rhyme,
Contain the essence of the true sublime:
Thus when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,
The idiot mother of "an idiot boy;"
A moon-struck silly lad who lost his way,
And, like his bard, confounded night with day,*
So close on each pathetic part he dwells,
And each adventure so sublimely tells,
That all who view the "idiot in his glory,"
Conceive the bard the hero of the story.

Shall gentle COLERIDGE pass unnotic'd here,
To turgid ode, and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still Obscurity's a welcome guest,
If Inspiration should her aid refuse,
To him who takes a pixy for a muse,†
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to eulogize an ass.
How well the subject suits his noble mind!
"A fellow-feeling makes us wond'rous kind.”

* Mr. W. in his Preface labours hard to prove, that prose and verse are much the same, and certainly his precepts and practice are strictly conformable.

"And thus to Betty's question he

Made answer like a traveller bold,
The cock did crow to-whoo, to-whoo,

And the sun did shine so cold," &c. &c.

Lyrical Ballads, page 129.

Coleridge's poems, page 11, Songs of the Pixies, i. e. Devonshire Fairies: page 42, we have "Lines to a Young Lady;" and page 52," Lines to a Young Ass."