While his cold, quivering lips sent vows above, The vows dispersed that from those lips were borne, But never, never was that heart forsworn.' pp. 26, 27. This companion of his childhood, the object of his faithful and secret attachment, he accidentally discovers slumbering in a bower, formed on the spot where they parted. The sensations produced by the music of his pipe, mingling itself at first with her romantic dreams, and prolonging their enchantment when she awakes, are finely conceived. The lovers abruptly separate, without Javan's disclosing himself to her suspicions. The first impression, however, which this tale of ancient constancy' will make on the minds of many readers, will be its incongruity with the solemn business of the poem; of course no intelligent reader will consider the subject of a pure and faithful attachment in itself unsuitable in a poem of this cast; nor will he have any difficulty in supposing it to consist with the circumstances and simple manners of the antediluvian age, that the law of our nature, which inclines the heart to love, and provides for its reciprocation, should operate in the way which the poet has represented. Nor will it be any deduction from the interest which such a representation would excite, to find it exhibited, free from that licentiousness or grossness which characterizes the passion of love, as felt and described by the heathen poets of antiquity. The example of Milton would be sufficient to justify its alliance to the highest and most sacred themes. We must, however, concede, that the impression of incongruity to which we have alluded, is not to be wholly removed by these considerations; and we are disposed to attribute it to the associations insensibly attached to the subject, as connected with the sickly sentiments of novelists, or the absurdities of real life. In Milton, the dignity of the persons of the drama, the majesty of the diction, and the elevation as well as purity which is imparted to the expression of love, rescue it from all such degrading contaminations. But we have seen even Milton, when translated into the polite language of a neighbouring country, and that by the hand of no ordinary genius, sink, as a poet, into the narrator of undignified gallantries. In our tragic writers, love is heightened into the sublimity of energy or of pathos, by the situations in which it is exhibited, or the consequences which it involves. But the display of the simple feeling in an individual, however natural, however beautifully developed, unallied to consequences of sufficient interest to command our sympathy, will please only in proportion as the feeling has connected itself with the reader's own experience. We are unwilling to suppose that, in this part of his poem, Mr. Montgomery will fail of generally pleasing. We think that it well becomes the Christian poet to endeavour, by his best efforts, to rescue the name and the passion of love from the degrading or debasing associations to which we have alluded. It is that principle of our nature which is of universal and mighty operation; and according to the object on which it fixes, sinks the man into a slave, or exalts him to a hero; enchains or ennobles his faculties; subverses the powers of his nature, or elevates him to the highest exertions and the most extatic enjoyments of which, next to those of devotion, he is capable. A tale of antediluvian courtship may, to some persons sound too ludicrously improbable even for romance; but as a 'similitude of events,' as a transaction of real life, we can contemplate it as neither improbable nor ludicrous; or so to those only who have suffered ridicule to make them incredulous of the best feelings of our nature. We had intended to make a few observations on the introduction of the goatherd sorcerer, in the 7th Canto, but our limits forbid our entering upon a fresh topic. We must also leave our readers to form their own judgement of Mr. Montgomery's versification, briefly observing that it is, in general, very melodious and varied, and often splendid. He sometimes succeeds in giving to a particular line an exquisite effect; but, not unfrequently, the construction is such, that the whole strength of the line depends upon the cæsura, and is very likely to be destroyed by a careless reader. The effect of art, in some places too, is to give the appearance of the want of it; the melody of the couplet is sacrificed to obtain a varied harmony; the general style of the poem, also, is rather diffuse, which gives a tameness to some passages; but upon the whole, we think, Mr. Montgomery has evinced himself a master of versification. We may leave the Occasional Pieces' to speak for themselves. Their author is sufficiently known to our readers as a lyric poet. He now stands forward with loftier pretensions, pretensions which his contemporaries have recognized, and which, we have no doubt, posterity will still more highly appreciate. As a work of genius, the World before the Flood' bears the stamp, and contains a principle of immortality; while the purity of its sentiments and the distinguished excellence of its tendency, will render that immortality a moral benefit to the world; and constitute for the brow of its author, a crown whose glory shall outlive the verdure, and outshine the fairest honours of the laurel. Art. II. The Philosophy of Nature; or, The Influence of Scenery on the Mind and Heart. Post 8vo. 2 vols. pp. 664. Price 18s. Murray. 1813. IT may be asserted that there is a relation between the human mind and the whole known creation: in other words, that there are some principles of correspondence in the constitution of the mind, and in the constitutions of all known created things, in consequence of which, those things are adapted to produce some effect on the mind when they are presented to it, whether through the medium of the senses, or in any more immediately intellectual manner. It may be added, perhaps, that if the condition of the mind were absolutely and perfectly good, this effect would always be beneficial. As the mind must, in all periods and regions of its existence, receive its happiness from causes exterior to itself, and as it is probable the one Supreme Cause of that happiness, the Deity, will make a very great part of the happiness which human spirits are to receive from him, come to them through the medium of his works, it is a matter of inexpressible exultation, that those works are so stupendous in multiplicity and magnitude; that they are, indeed, for all practical purposes, infinite. It is with a triumphant emotion that an aspiring spirit, assured of living for ever, trusting in the divine mercy that it shall be happy in that eternity of life, and certain that its happiness must arise from the impressions made on it by surrounding existences, it is with an emphatic emotion of triumph that such a spirit considers the vastness of the universe, as progressively demonstrated to us by the advances of science, and as attempted to be realized by an earnest, a delightful, but still an overwhelmed effort of imagination. For it regards the infinity of things as the scene of its indefatigable and everlasting activity, in which it shall find that millions of contemplated manifestations of beauty and sublimity are but preparing it to advance to new visions, with perceptions for ever becoming more vivid, and delight for ever growing more intense. A spirit of this order will regard the ample display of beauty and magnificence made even to the inhabitants of this globe, as forming a kind of introductory stage for the indulgence and exercise of curiosity and admiration; and as adapted, in combination with the objects of religious faith, to operate on the conformation and habitudes of the mind with an influence not less salutary than pleasing. This admirer of the Creator's VOL. XI. * Such as some modes of inspiration. works will, indeed, be sometimes compelled to regret the feebleness of the senses by means of which the soul is reduced to receive its perceptions of creation; will sometimes be tempted to deplore the inferiority of the terrestrial egion itself to such worlds as he can easily imagine to exist; and will much oftener lament, that even of this sublunary scene, he is, by many causes, confined to contemplate, immediately with his own faculties of perception, an extremely diminutive portion, and perhaps of an immensely inferior character, in point of beauty and sublimity, to many other portions of it; yet he will, nevertheless, be arrested and delighted by many phenomena; will often lose himself in inquisition and wonder; and, on the whole, will be sensible that nature greatly affects the habitual state of his mind. Such a description is applicable, however, to a very small number, comparatively, of the human race. This captivation of nature is felt by extremely few but highly cultivated minds, and, indeed, by the smaller proportion only even of them. Here and there, a rare individual who has received from nature an extraordinary measure of imagination and sensibility, feels the enchanting influence in the early years of life, antecedent to the high cultivation of the faculties; and onward through life, though the full means and advantages of that discipline should never be enjoyed. But it is notorious that the generality of men are exempt. Savages are quite insensible to the beautiful or the awful aspects of the scenes in which they are pursuing their occupations of hunting, fishing, and war. They would stand without emotion on the precipice from which they would look down on the cataract of Niagara. Nor, perhaps, would the half-civilized Canadian hunter be betrayed, in the same situation, into any great excess of solemnity or enthusiasm. We remember the perfect sobriety of prose with which an American man of the woods, who was even capable of writing a book, Patrick Gass, has described or mentioned the great falls of the Missouri. The same want of what may be called poetical feeling, regarding the sublimities of scenery, is apparent in all the uncultivated and slightly cultivated nations, from the savage up to the confines of the civilized state; in the South Americans, the Tartars, the Laplanders, the Norwegians, and even the Icelanders,-excepting that some among these North European nations associate certain mysterious ideas of reverence and fear with their great mountains. We are not aware, that even in the inhabitants of Switzerland, an admiration of its grand scenery constitutes any material part of that passion for their country for which they are so celebrated. We need not say a word of the mass of the population of those regions, which combine the beauties of nature with the striking remains of the Grecian and Roman taste and magnificence. If we come, at last, to what assumes, and, indeed, we believe justly assumes, to be the most cultivated people on earth, we doubt whether we can make any striking improvement of the representation, as to the inspiring and elevating influence of nature, and the number and enthusiasm of her pupils. Of the several divisions of our territory and people, the country and posterity of Ossian have assumed greatly the highest character for influences exerted by the scenery and felt by the people. We have read, in close succession, Dr. Johnson's account of the region and the race, and Mrs. Grant's: a conjunction and comparison which reminded us of the description given by travellers of the flowery tracts immediately on the edge of the eternal ice on the lower declivities of the Alps. It would be delightful to receive Mrs. Grant's representation as the correct one; and, therefore, we endeavour, with all our might, to believe in it; nevertheless, we are visited by strong surmises of unintentional poetry in the lady's very interesting memorials of a national character, which, she confesses, is fast approaching to extinction. While we can conceive, and indeed admit, that there was in the character of the Highlanders, before the breaking up of their ancient social economy, something more imaginative, more perceptive of the gloomy sublimity of their scenery, more responsive, by solemn and elevated sentiments, to its aspects, than was perhaps ever to be found in any other uncultivated tribe inhabiting a similar region, it would yet be absurd to set substantially aside, in favour of this one race, the general law, that unexpanded faculties, undisciplined taste, scantiness of associated ideas, want of the means of judging of objects by comparison;-in one word, that ignorance must inevitably preclude, in a great degree, that kind of sensibility and reflection by which the mind has its perception of the fair, the marvellous, and the sublime in Nature. And, doubtless, the contemplative enthusiasm indulged on the mountains, among the rocks, by the torrents and cataracts, and on the sea shore, was confined to the few spirits of the family or the kindred of genius, while the great majority could behold such objects with only a little less temperance of emotion than the ordinary tone of sentiment among other rustic portions of mankind. Assuredly it was not every Highlander that gave out emanations of poetry while passing under impending precipices, or standing on the summits of mountains. If we descend from that legendary, visionary, and almost vanished race, to the uncultivated population of England, Wales, and Ireland, there will need no other experiment than that of a short sojourn in Cumberland, in Carnarvonshire, or |