thought its image so pleasing, that, in the catalogue of ships from Homer, he sets before us the prospect of English spires, not Grecian. If the cloud-capt tower' itself be a striking, and often a beautiful, object; now much more poetical, when, grey with years, or illumined by the setting sun, it carries the thought to that worship with which it is connected, the sabbaths of our forefathers; or harmonizes with the soft, sinking landscape of evening, and the ideas of another world." This is written like a gentleman, a scholar, a poet, and a Christian. As we have quoted all that Mr Campbell has charged Mr Bowles with, we are in justice bound to give, as entire as our limits will permit, that gentleman's reply. It concludes thus: But, enough of this! I have read your observations with greater attention than you could have read mine; and having so read them, I must confess I do not find one point established against those positions which I had distinctly laid down, unless that may be called an answer, where, in refutation of so plain a position, you say the same thing. say, "For another circumstance, which almost persuades me you never read my Criticism on Pope's Poetic Character, is this. You He glows with passion in the Epistle of Eloisa; and displays a lofty feeling, much above that of the satirist and man of the world, in his Prologue to Cato, and his Epistle to Lord Oxford.'-Campbell. This may be called by Mr Perry an answer!' how complete an answer it is, will be shewn by the following few lines of my Criticism: We regret that we have little more truly pathetic from his pen than the Epistle of Eloisa; the Elegy to the unfortunate Lady; and let me not forget one of the sweetest and most melodious of his pathetic effusions, the Address to Lord Oxford, • Such were the notes my once-lov'd Poet sung.' Bowles. "As I am conscious of having been misunderstood, may I again intreat pardon for shewing what I did say of a poem founded on manners, and what I did not. I said this of the Rape of the Lock. In this composition Pope stands alone, unrivalled, and possibly never to be rivalled. All his successful labour of correct and musical versification, all his talents of accurate description, though in an inferior province of poetry, are here consummately displayed; and as far as artificial life, that is," manners," not PASSIONS, are capable of being rendered poetical, they are here rendered so by the fancy, the propriety, the elegance, and the poetic beauty of the machinery.' "Now I would put to you a few plain questions; and I would beseech you not to ask whether I mean this or that, for I think you must now understand what I do mean. I would beseech you also not to write beside the question, but answer simply and plainly, whether you think that the sylph of Pope, trembling over the froth of a coffee-pot,' be an image as poetical as the delicate and quaint Ariel, who sings, Where the bee sucks, there lurk I?' Or the elves of Shakspeare: -Spirits of another sort, That with the morning light make sport.' Whether you think the description of a game of cards be as poetical, supposing the execution in the artists equal, as a description of a WALK in a FOREST? Whether an age of refinement be as conducive to pictures of poetry, as a period less refined? Whether passions, affections, &c. of the human heart, be not a higher source of what is pathetic or sublime in poetry, than habits or manners, that apply only to artificial life? If you agree with me, it is all I meant to say; if not, we differ, and always shall, on the principles of poetical criticism. Your last observation is this: "I know not how to designate the possessor of such gifts, but by the name of a genuine poet.' Nor do I, nor did I ever; and I will venture to assert, that if you examine well what I here have said on POPE's several writings, you will not think I ever shewed reluctance to attribute to him that high name. "Again. You say, POPE's discrimination lies in the lights and shades of "human" manners, which are at least as interesting as those of rocks and leaves! Does it require more than the commonest understanding to perceive the fallacy of this language. "I fear it would be thought impertinent to ask you at what University you acquired your logic; but I guess your knowledge of the art was not acquired at Oxford. Your logic is this: Human manners are the province of poets;' therefore, the general and loftier passions are not more poetical than manners of artificial life.' Shall I hint further, that the expression human manners is vague and inapplicable. Human manners may designate equally the red Indian in the forests of the Mississippi; the plumed soldier, and the grey-haired minstrel of chivalry; or Peggy Moreen, in a Bath ball-room. Every comedy, every farce, has human manners; but my proposition was confined to manners of a refined age, which I called artificial; and which you have artificially slurred over with irrelevant expressions, that prove nothing. Artificial manners are human, but human manners' need not be ⚫ artificial.' "I beg further to say, that there is not one passage, concerning the poetical beauties of which you have so justly spoken, which I have not expressly pointed out myself, as the reader may find in turning to the passages; particularly let him remember what I have said respecting the PATHOS and the PICTURES, and the SOLEMN and SWEET HARMONIES, of the Epistle of Eloisa. And can I help pointing out, not with triumph, but with regret, that you not only agree with me in some points, but that where we differ your criticism conflictingly labours against your own argument; for when, nearly in the last sentence, you say, he, POPE, glows with passion in the Eloisa, and displays a LOFTY feeling, much ABOVE that of the SATIRIST and man of the world, in his Prologue to Cato, and his Epistle to Lord OXFORD;' what is that but to say, that glowing passions and lofty feelings are much ABOVE those which distinguish the SATIRIST and man of the world!!' fence. It would delight us to meet with Mr Bowles again on some more important occasion. He has written tic poetry in our language—and though some of the most beautiful and pathehe has, of late years, rather retired from the world, that world has not forgotten him, but, on the contrary, he is remembered by many thousand hearts with admiration and love. He is, without doubt, an English classic In the concluding pages of his pam--and we see no reason, while Crabbe phlet, Mr Bowles notices, with much earnestness, but perfect temper, an assertion of Mr Campbell that "he had kept in the shade the good qualities of Pope, and exaggerated his bad." He is, we think, equally successful in repelling this accusation-but we have no room for any part of his able de and Rogers are still coming forward with unimpaired power or elegance, why he too, who we believe is a younger man than either of them, should not rouse himself to some new labours in which it is quite impossible that he should be otherwise than completely successful. REMARKS ON TYTLER'S LIFE OF THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON.* We imagine it will be allowed by all Scottish men of letters who read this little book, that its author has conferred a considerable service on his country by publishing it; and yet we are not prepared to say that we find in the book any very important addition to the sum of what had before been known and said concerning its very remarkable subject. If we except a single curious enough document discovered last year by Mr Hibbert of Clapham, we do not think there is any thing in this life, of which former memoirs of Crichton have not contained some hints. But the merit of Mr Tytler consists in his having thrown together, in a regular form, all the scattered materials of information concerning Crichton, which, till now, had been afloat in the world-in other words, in his having presented his country with a compact and elegant view of all the facts, arguments, and speculations, with which the name of this wonderful person had ever been connected. The former biographers were all either too credulous, or too sceptical, or too superficial, or too hasty. Mr Tytler has examined his subject in the proper spirit of rational veneration, as well as of sobriety and calmness he has examined it with much patience, and apparently to the very bottom-and he has embodied the results of his studies in a memoir which is extremely interesting and beautiful in every respect, and shews, altogether, that its author has inherited a full measure, both of that taste for elegant research, and that talent for elegant writing, which distinguished his father-the late amiable and accomplished Lord Woodhouselee. Henceforth, we shall never be troubled with any of that silly levity which has made so many of our second and third rate critics and collectors attempt, to throw discredit on the surpassing powers and achievements of this prince of precocious genius. For the honour of our nature, (for as to our country, that is but a small matter indeed in regard to such a person as this) it will now be a thing denied by no one, that there did exist a being so exquisitely entitled to go down to all posterity by the name of THE ADMIRABLE-a man, who, having run through all the career of competition, and placed himself by one voice at the head of all his contemporaries, whether in respect to the accomplishments of mind or body, died at the age of twenty-two,-and left behind him, in the unanimous admiration of all that ever saw him, a Life of James Crichton of Cluny, commonly called the Admirable Crichton. With an Appendix of Original Papers. By Patrick Fraser Tytler, Esq. F.R.S.E. Advocate. Edinburgh, Tait, 1819. monument of glory, only less grand (although after all not less lasting,) than he might have left behind him in the history of letters and of arms, had Heaven allotted him such a length of life as is usually bestowed on the less wonderful specimens of the race to which he belonged. It would seem, indeed, as if the untimely destiny which cut off Crichton, had been one of the very darkest of all the inexplicable mysteries of Providence.— "Chrichtonum Superi voluere ostendere mundo tantum : Non mundo hunc hi voluere dare." It is not necessary for us to go into the details of the incidents of Crichton's life, as they now have been set forth by Mr Tytler. It is better to quote one or two passages from his disquisition on the authorities from which these details have been gathered-they will be sufficient to satisfy our readers that our commendation has not been misplaced. The two chief contem porary authorities for the miraculous history of Crichton, are the celebrated Aldus Manutius, his personal friend; and a greater man still, Joseph Scaliger, who travelled in Italy within a very few years of his melancholy death. Of the evidence of the former, Mr Tytler says very justly. "It is at once of the most unexceptionable, This au and the most conclusive nature. thor does not transcribe what he only heard from other persons, or had read in other books, regarding events which had passed before his own time. the testimony of his own individual admiration. In the dedication of his Lælius to Lorenzo Massa, who then held one of the highest offices in the Venetian Republic, he congratulates this eminent man upon his intimacy with Crichton, "divinum plane juvenem ;" and he subjoins an ode which had been addressed by the young scholar to the Venetian secretary. Lastly, in a pathetic dedication of the Timæus of Cicero to the memory of Crichton, he records the year of his death, the violence by which it was occasioned, and the universal regret which accompanied it." The evidence in the Scaligerana is thus treated. "There is one other testimony, which, as it proceeds from a contemporary author of distinguished celebrity, who affirms that his information was obtained in Italy, ought not to be passed over;-I allude to an account of Crichton, preserved by Joseph Scaliger. I have heard,' says the author, ⚫ when I was in Italy, of one Crichton, a Scotchman, who had only reached the age of twenty-one, when he was killed by the command of the Duke of Mantua, who knew twelve different languages,--had studied the fathers and the poets,-disputed de omni He was a man of very wonderful genius; scibili, and replied to his antagonists in verse. more worthy of admiration than of esteem. He had something of the coxcomb about him, and only wanted a little common sense. It is remarkable that princes are apt to take an affection for geniuses of this stamp, but very rarely for truly learned men. This passage, from the Scaligerana, is valuable in may points of view. Scaliger obtained his information in Italy, in all probability, from those who had been witnesses of the genius of Crichton; and the whole sentence bears strongly upon it the marks of truth and impartiality. Crichton, he tells us, was a little of a coxcomb,' a his eminent talents, and a failing exceedcircumstance by no means inconsistent with He was a contemporary, an intimate friend of Crichton's, and an eyewitness of those public disputations which he records. Tu vero me non solum auctorem consiliorum, sed spectatorem pugnarum mirificarum, habuisti.' He accordingly describes, with the most pointed mi-ingly natural in a young man possessed of nuteness, the different scenes in which Crichton exhibited his talents; he dwells upon the various powers, which, in the different branches of philosophy, in the use of many different languages, and in his facility in poetical composition, he had exhibited before men who were Aldus's own contemporaries, some of whom must have been Crichton's literary rivals, and all of whom were ready to contradict his statement, had it been unsupported by fact. He records the illustrious descent of Crichton, the estates possessed, and the authority enjoyed by his father, the extreme beauty of his countenance and person, his excellence in all manly and martial exercises, his exact age, the eminent preceptors to whom his education was intrusted, his arrival at Venice, and the verses which he presented upon that occasion. Nor is he contented with such uncommon powers of mind and beauty of person, who had been tried by that severest of all ordeals-admiration; the admiration, too, not of a limited circle of friends, or of an insulated university, but of a whole people; and what is perhaps still more difficult to bear, who had listened to the praises of the sweetest tongues, and been exposed to the radiance of the fairest eyes in Italy; yet, after touching upon his failings, Scaliger does justice to his genius. He was a man of stupendous powers. C'estoit ingenium prodigiosum; and I need not say that this encomium comes with infinite force, when we take into account the sarcastic matter with which it is accompanied." The following elegant passage sums up the last of Mr Tytler's dissertations, which is chiefly occupied with reclaiming the arguments against the famous Crichton, employed by some who have chosen to think his various attainments impossible for a person of his age. "We may be told, (and this is the very point for which we contend,) that the union of all these talents, the combination of this variety of intellectual excellence, in so young a man, is a very remarkable circumstance. We may be told, and we do insist, that this union becomes still more remarkable, when we consider, that, in all the manly and military exercises, which are so commonly neglected even by the inferior candidates for scientific or literary eminence, this singular man, arrived at such perfection as to excel those whose lives were devoted to their study; that in all the more elegant accomplishments which belong to the gentleman and the courtier, he was conspicuous by the facility with which he had acquired, and the ease and grace with which he displayed them ;-that, from the accounts of his most intimate friends, he who concentrated in himself this various store of intellectual and physical powers, was remarkable for a modesty of manner, and a sweetness and gentleness of disposition, which endeared him to his friends, and disarmed the jealousy of his rivals; and that, to finish the picture, he was, in his figure and countenance, one of the handsomest men of his age. When all this is put together, when all these rays of excellence are traced back into one focus, and found centering in one person, we may indeed be told, and there are few who will not assent to the observation, that this person must have been no common man.- We say, that if, as has been shewn, the authors, through whom this account has been transmitted, are entitled to perfect credit, this union of talent, is, although neither supernatural or incredible, entitled to high admiration ;-that it is not to be wondered at, that his contemporaries should have been astonished and dazzled by the appearance of so brilliant a vision, a vision, too, which rose so bright and beautiful only to set so sadly and so soon. And we, lastly, contend, that the possessor of such unrivalled excellence was not only entitled to receive from them, but is now as fully entitled to demand from us, that appellation by which, as the only reward of his labours, his genius, and his misfortunes, he has descended to posterity, the Admirable Crich ton." After all that Mr Tytler has done, however, it will still be in the inimit able pages of the Jewel that people will seek for the most graphic, original, and delightful picture of Crichton and his fate. We wish Mr Tytler had been a little more full in his notices of that most remarkable of all his prede cessors,-in our humble mind, not only one of the most curious and whimsical, but one of the most powerful, also, of all the geniuses our part of the island has produced. To give the world a good life of the exquisite Sir Thomas Urquhart, and a good edition of his exquisite works, would be a thing well worthy of Mr Tytler; and, we are sure, a thing most acceptable to the whole world. Nothing has ever, as yet, been written about this man, in a style at all corresponding to his merits; but the few passages which have been so often quoted from his Life of Crichton, are quite enough to prove the extent of his imaginative powers, even to those whose delicacy prevents them from reading the still finer monument of his genius-his translation of the two first books of Rabelais. It is well known that this cavalier was a prime member of the Saltfoot Schoolconsidering himself as the proper head of the race of Japhet, the heir male and representative of Seth the third son of Adam. But, as his genealogy, or as he calls it, ПANTOXPONOXANON, is in few hands, we shall make bold to enliven our pages with a few of the richest passages. One of his progenitors was Esormon, who lived in the year before Christ, 2139. He was, it seems, the first who took the name of Urquhart. "He was sovereign prince of Achaia. For his fortune in the wars, and affability in conversation, his subjects and familiars surnamed him goxagros, that is to say, for tunate and well beloved. After which time, his posterity ever since hath acknowledged him the father of all that carry the name of URQUHART. He had for his arms, three Banners, three Ships, and three Ladies in a field Or; with the picture of a young Lady above the waste, holding in her right hand a brandished sword, and a branch of myrtyle in the left, for his crest: and for supporters two Javanites, after the soldier habit of Achaia, with this motto in the scroll of his coat-armour, Taura 'n rein agradeά TH= that is, These three are worthy to behold. Upon his wife Narfesia, who was sovereign of the Amazons, he begot Crattynter." This high lineage became transplanted into our island a few centuries before the Christian era. Its chief was at that time Lutork Urquhart, whose history is thus summarily given. Our readers will not fail to observe, that Ensign and Adjutant Odoherty has a good claim of kindred with the house of Lutork. "Ferguse the First, at his coming into Olbion, after he had, in honour of his predecessor Gathelus, given unto his landing place the name of Argile, and called the whole country he was to possess, Scotland, after the Scotobrigants (by Seneca, in his satyrs, called Scutobrigantes,) by a Doric dialect, for Scotobrigantes, from Brigansa, a town in Galicia, now called Compostella, which the Scots, of old, both built and inhabited he likewise giveth them the epithet of Cærulei, because (in my opinion) the most of the inhabitants there, were accustomed, even then, to the wearing of blue caps, after the Scotogalli, (of whom our Scots-Irish language is termed Galick, as they from Galicia) and lastly, after those that had the surname of Scot, without any other designation. He gave in marriage to Lutork sexgros, the captain-general of all his forces, because of his dexterity, both in the Macedonian and Romish discipline of war, his own sister Benedita; for which cause, the river upon whose bank the promise was made, hath ever since been called Urquhart, and the valley or glen (as they term it there) where the marriage was consummated, Glen-Urquhart, or Glenurchi, and that in honour of the Odocharties, Ochonchars, Clanrurie, Scotobrigants, Clanmolinespick, and Esormon, who were all of them Lutork's predecessors, and surnamed Urquharts. This Lutork, besides his own ancient inheritance from Cromarty to castle Urquhart, inclusive, and several other lands, successively derived to him from Nomostor, took possession then of the Thanedom of Lochaber, with many other territories of a large extent. On Benedita he begot Machemos." He sums up his pedigree thus :- From Adam the 144 143 138 From Zeron the From Vocompos the 30 94 31 His account of Crichton is written throughout with the same unbridled license of imagination exhibited in this more than Allantonian pedigree. We would very fain quote the whole of it, but must confine ourselves to a single passage which has been very often quoted already, viz. the account of the death of the admirable youth. He has already told us that Crichton was spending the night in company with an Italian lady, who fell in love with him on occasion of some public displays of his genius-and the whole scene in the lady's house is described with the most pictorial minuteness-beginning from the moment he entered into her apartment, "or rather into an alcoranal paradise,' "Where nothing tending to the pleasure of all the senses was wanting the weather being a little chill and coldish, they on a blew velvet couch sate by one another, towards a char-coal fire burning in a silver brasero, whilst in the next room adjacent thereto, a pretty little round table of cedarwood was a covering for the supping of them two together: the cates prepared for them, and a week before that time bespoke, were of the choisest dainties, and most delicious junkets, that all the territories of Italy were able to afford; and that deservedly; for all the Romane empire could not produce a completer paire to taste them." And so on to the minute when they were disturbed by the noise of the young prince of Mantua and his drunken companions at the door-" the clapper up again, they rap with a flap, till a threefold clap makes the sound to rebound." "The admirable and ever-renowned Crichtoun, who at the prince's first manning of the court taking the alarm, step'd from the shrine of Venus to the oracle of Pallas armata; and by the help of the waiting gentlewoman, having apparelled himself with a paludumental vesture, after the antic fashion of the illustrious Romans, both for that he minded not to make himself then known, that to walk then in such like disguise was the anniversary custome of all that country, and that all both gentlemen and others standing in that court, were in their mascaradal garments; with his sword in his hand, like a messenger from the gods, came down to relieve the page from the post whereat he stood sentry; and when (as the light of the minor planets appears not before the glorious rays of Titan) he had obscured the irradiancy of Pomponacio with his more effulgent presence, and that under pretext of turning him to the page to desire him to stand behind him, as he did, he had exposed the full view of his left side (so far as the light of torches could make it perceivable) to the lookers on, who being all in cuerpo carrying swords in their hands instead of cloaks about them, imagined really, by the badge or cognizance they saw near his heart, that he was one of my ladies discourse to the prince, and the nine gentlemen that were with him; neither of all whereof, as they were accoutred, was he able, (either by the light of the tapers, or that of the moon, which was then but in the first week of its waxing, it being the Tuesday next to the first new moon that followed the purification day) to discern in any manner of way what they were: and postures, that the influence of the grape had for that he perceived by their unstedfast made them subjects to Bacchus, and that their extranean-like demeanour towards him (not without some amazement) did manifest his certainty of their not knowing him; chief domestic servants: he addressed his |