transition is made, from a well-merited compliment to Mrs Grant, the celebrated writer of the Letters from the Mountains, to the many persons of learning and genius whom Scotland has in modern times produced; an attempt is made to characterize their peculiar endowments; and the Epistle concludes with some personal feelings and hopes, and fears, and aspirations, of the author, in a supposed colloquy between himself and the enlightened friend with whom he holds his poetical correspondence.

The principal merit of this poem is the very great skill with which the character of epistolary composition is preserved. Though abounding in description, the writer always bears in mind, that the person to whom he is writing is as familiar with the objects described as he himself is; and, therefore, he rather recalls the remembrance of them by short and vivid touches than by any protracted and laborious delineation. It is an admirable specimen of a poetical journal.

The following passage has, we think, very extraordinary merit—it is simple, clear, and descriptive.

"The waves were crimson'd by the setting

sun,

Retiring Staffa met the ruddy rays,
And veil'd her columns in a rosy haze;
Dark isles, around the skirts of ocean spread,
Seem'd clouds that hover'd o'er its tossing
bed.

By craggy shores and cliffs of dusky hue,
Scatter'd in open sea, our galley flew ;
Fearful! had storms these rocky mountains,
beat,

But now the laden waves scarce lick'd their feet,

And each brown shadow on the waters cast, Frown'd smilingly upon us as we passed. From rock to rock the galley smoothly slid, Now in wide sea, among the cliffs now hid; No round the skyey zone the red waves

leapt,

Now in each narrow channel dark they slept.

At last Iona burst into the scene, Reclin'd amid the ev'ning waves, serene, The last beams fainting on her russet green. Her crescent village, o'er the harbour hung, Spread its pale smoke the breezeless air along,

While from her highest mound the ruin'd

fane

With proud composure, ey'd the desert main. We gain'd the bay, and trembling touch'd

the land

On which, of old, religion's mighty hand
Stretch'd from the skies, and half in clouds
conceal'd,
Stamp'd the broad signet of the law reveal'd.

Through cells once vocal to the monk

and nun,

cornice bore

O'er royal tombs in grass and weeds o'errun,
Through pillar'd aisles whose sculptur'd
The fragment tales of legendary lore,
Our lingering feet in musing silence stray'd,
Till cross and holy image swam in shade.
No sound the solemn stillness broke, except
The passing gale, or charnel vaults that wept;
Or, from the ocean's dim-discover'd foam,
The dash of oars that bore the fisher home."

The Poet describes equally well the beautiful scenery of Balachuilish-the savage solitude of Glencoe the quiet serenity of Glenroy-and the dreamlike and breathless slumber of Loch Laggan. We quote the description of the last scene, for the sake of the elegant tribute to the genius of a most excellent person.

"How deep thy still retreat, O Laggan

lake!

N

Who yet will hide me in thy birchen brake? Where thy old moss-grown trees are rotting down

Across the path, as man were never known; Where thy clear waters sleep upon the shore, As if they ne'er had felt the ruffling oar; Where on thy woody promontory's height, The evening vapours wreathe their folds of light,

While from their driving fleece the torrents, flashing,

Down the rude rocks in long cascade are dashing !

O you would think on that lone hill that none Had e'er reclin'd, save the broad setting sun! Yet here the musing steps of genius roam From neighbouring Paradise of love and home :

That gifted Spirit whose descriptions, warm, Paint Highland manners, every mountaincharm,

By the green tomhans of this fairy wood,
Nurses her glowing thought in solitude!"

The second Epistle is addressed to the Poet's Wife, and contains remembrances of, and reflections on, all the most interesting feelings and incidents of his boyish and youthful days, interspersed with grateful acknowledgments of his present happiness, and many affecting expressions of contentment with his peaceful lot. That man is to be pitied, who can read this Epistle without sincere admiration of the writer's accomplishments, and affection for his amiable and simple character. What can be more touching than the following remembrance of his boyish happiness?

"Free as the gales, and early as the dawn, Forth did we fly along the level lawn,

pure?

Why should our manhood be ambition's slave, Or creep the drudge of avarice to the grave? Why should the sun on man's unconscious gaze,

Pour from the eastern hill his living rays? Or why his softening splendour gild the west, Nor raise one wish that such may be our rest? Ah! far at sea, and wanderers from the shore, Nature still calls us, but we hear no more? Yet where her pensive look reflection throws, Remember'd forms of beauty yield repose; On them she pauses, and with filling eye, Plans the blest refuge of futurity!

Thus to the scenes in which our childhood past,

Memory returns with love that still can last; Wherever, since, our vagrant course has been, Whatever troubled hours have come between, Those simple beauties, which could first engage

Our hearts, still please through each suc

ceeding age;

Nor are they yet so sunk in meaner care, That nature's image quit its impress there!" There is much feeling in the following passage;

"Can I forget the hallow'd hour I past In Grasmere chapel, in the lonely waste, Driven by the rains that patter'd on the lake, (Perhaps no holier cause) repose to take? The simple people to each separate hand Divided, youths and maids in different band; Of the great power of God, their pastor spoke; Responsive from the hills loud thunders broke,

From the black-smoking hills whose wavering line

Through lead-bound panes was dimly seen to shine.

felt the voice of Man and Nature roll he deep conviction on my bending soul!

What if, amid the rural tribe, unknown,1--0 From Wordsworth's eye some moral glory shone,

Some beam of poesy and good combin'd,
That found the secret foldings of my mind?”- A

We shall finish our quotations from this part of the volume, with a short, vivid, and accurate, picture of one of the most beautiful scenes in the south of Scotland.

"How laugh'd thine eyes, when from the
Where sunk in shade retiring Leader fell,
bushy dell,
Our wheels slow wound us up the open
height,

Whence Tweed's rich valley burst upon the
Below, the river roll'd in spreading pride,
sight.
The lofty arch embrac'd its auburn tide :
Bright in the orient gleam the waters shone,
Here flowing free, there ridg'd with shelv-
Each side the banks with fields and trees
ing stone,

were green,

High waving on the hills were harvests seen; The nodding sheaf mov'd heavily along, And jocund reapers sang their morning song, Calm slept the clouds on cloven Eildon laid, And distant Melrose peep'd from leafy shade."

The translations are, we think, more unequal than the original composi tions, some of them being excessively bad, and others most admirable. The cause of this seems to have been an occasional desire to indulge in fantastic ingenuity of versification and expression, in which the worthy Transla tor not unfrequently exhibits a most portentous forgetfulness of common sense, and employs a sort of language to our ears wholly unintelligible. When not beset by these unlucky fits of ingenuity, he catches the spirit of the original with great felicity; and his translations, or rather imitations of Horace, are indisputably the most elegant and graceful of any in the English language. He has proved, by his.. translations of several of the Ödes, "how gracefully any short and classi cal composition may be arranged in a form which at once insures brevity, and unites elegance with the most varied and perfect melody of versification." What can be finer than the air he has thrown over the 32 Ode of Book I. "Possimus si quid," &c.

"O lyre, if vacant in the leafy shade,
We've us'd thy ministry in many a strain,
Not speedily to die, come yet again,
And let the Latian song thy chords pervade:
By him of Lesbos first harmonious made,
The warrior bard, who, on the tented plain,

Of future fight, and love already breathe Wanton: Vain presage! for he soon in death Shall stain thy streams with ruddy drops impure.

Thy icy streams the dog stars burning hour Afflicts not; in their cool the toil'd ox laves His scorched sides; thy shades refresh the flocks.

Fame too is thine, if aught the poet's power Who sings thy dipping oaks, romantic caves, And prattling rills light-leaping from their V rocks."

In his translation of a Chorus in the Phenisse of Enripides, he has endeavoured, and we think successfully, to trace a strong resemblance to a celebrated passage in Shakspeare. "Grim visag'd war, wherefore do blood and

death

Than merry meetings more thy temper

suit?

The translation from Tyrtæus is very dull, but the fault is in the original. Tyrtæus, it is said, roused the martial enthusiasm of the Spartans by his poetry. If so, it is a proof that the Spartans had no taste for nothing can be heavier and more spiritless than his remains. The Poet-Laureate, Pye, translated some of those martial effusions with kindred lumpishness-and a few lines read to a volunteer company by their Colonel, set the soldiers into a sound sleep on parade. Polwhele rendered them still more som> niferous, for they overcame the wakefulness of the Cornish miners; and, lastly, Professor Young of Glasgowrecited them in choice English to two hundred sleeping tyros, in the Greek class-room of that university. We had forgotten Mr Charles Elton, who himself fell fairly asleep during the process of translation-and the present version seems to have been made be tween a snore and a yawn, and is the most powerful soporific in the whole materia poetica. We decline quoting any part of it, lest our readers should be unable to peruse the rest of this article.

The Translator, however, soon gets upon better ground, and gives us about twenty select sonnets from Petrarch. We have compared his translations with those of Mrs Dobson, Dr Nott, and many anonymous writers, and they far outshine them all, both in fidelity and elegance. It is a most miserable mistake, to believe that Petrarch has no genuine sensibility. Is not his 24th Sonnet of Book II. most pathetic? It is thus exquisitely rendered: "The eyes, the arms, the hands, the feet, the face,

Which made my thoughts and words so warm and wild,

And I live on! a melancholy slave,
Tost by the tempest in a shatter'd bark,
Reft of the lovely light that cheer'd the wave;
The flame of genius, too, extinct and dark.
Here let my rays of love conclusion have;nos
Mute be the lyre; tears best my sorrows
mark."

One other quotation, and we must say good-bye to this accomplished scholar and gentleman.

Sacred Songs. By THOMAS MOORE, Esq. and Sir JOHN STEVENSON, Mus. Doc. J. Power, 34, Strand. Price £1, 1s.

"CONTEMPLATIVE piety, or the in

tercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical," &c."The essence of poetry is inventionsuch invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are few, and, being few, universally known: but few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression."*

So says Dr Johnson. It is happy for the world, that, in spite of the prognostics of literary prophets, there is something in the mind of man too buoyant to be borne down by any of those impossibilities which have been conjured up by a host of cool unimaginative critics. It is idle to tell us what cannot be done in the walks of imagination, or what is the point at which the poet's power of illustration must stop. If any were to assert, in

* Johnson's Lives of the poets, vol. i. p. 275, Svo edition.

these days, that because Sternhold and Hopkins, and Tate and Brady, were eminently pious and devotional versifiers, therefore all that is to be said in poetry, on the subject of devotion, had been said by them, we should all see the absurdity of such a declaration ; and equally arbitrary and unjust, it appears to us, is the assertion we have quoted. The doctrines of religion may be few and simple: the analogies, the combinations, the reflections, which they suggest to the mind of cultivated man, are boundless as its powers of enjoyment. There are some individuals, it is true, who regard the imagination as so dangerous a foe to true religion, that they will not allow her how often men of taste appear among any place in their systems. Observing the

literal enough to suppose, that the less opponents of religion, they seem the taste is cultivated, the more devodraw the line closer and closer, sepational we shall become. Hence they rating what is beautiful from what is true, and discarding every flower which might have been bound round the majestic front of Truth, without any diminution of her dignity. It is perfectly true, that, in the reception of articles of belief, we should look to no records less variable than those of divine revelation. Let our first principles be as simple as possible. Let not the traditions of men, however pleasing to our own imaginations, be any thing more to us than subjects of interesting speculation. Let all that we know by nature of the Being that made us, bow down to that revealed delineation of his attributes with which the Scriptures present us. But grant that our faith is fixed by these unerring standards, and where is the harm of resorting to those affecting associations-of striking those strings within us, to which we have recourse when we wish to awaken inferior recollections; We must give religion all the advantage we can. In the world she will have

enemies, and none more sturdy than those who, if they knew her as she is, would hail her as the source of the most noble conceptions. We will not sacrifice one iota of her simplicity for the sake of dressing her up for the acceptance of men of the world; but let her not be known to men of genius as the foe of a chastened and pure imagination.

We regard the volume before us as

something quite new in its kind. It may perhaps soften down some "stub born prejudices." Here is a poet, a man of unquestioned genius, bringing in his first, and, we trust, sincere offering at the shrine of devotion. Whether he has lost his fire, his tenderness, and his originality, in exchanging the subjects on which he exercised them for others of far transcending excellence, our readers must judge-more, however, from a perusal of the collection of "Sacred Songs," than from the few specimens we can give. Contemplative piety," says Dr Johnson, " cannot be poetical." In opposition to this doctrine, we cannot forbear citing the following song:

1.

regret that it is not in our power to make room for it, but that it is idle to suppose our pages can give celebrity to compositions such as this. There are some exquisite stanzas also, beginning, "O thou who driest the mourner's tear," "" which will probably be the most po pular in the collection, from their touching delineation of feelings, which we have all, or most of us, at one time or other experienced. Our readers may recollect a passage in "The Antiquary," in which Edie Ochiltree compares the flowers that smell sweetest by moonlight to the good deeds of men, and show fairest in adversityin the darkness of sin, and the decay of tribulation." Somewhat similar is the idea in the following stanza:

"That, broken heart, Which, like the plants that throw Their fragrance from the wounded part, Breathes sweetness out of wo."

We must conclude here, however. The temptation to transcribe is almost irresistible, but we must resist it; and we trust that the collection before us will be better known than we can make it by our extracts. The greatest defect of Mr Moore's style, and one which is least of all tolerable in devotional poetry, is too much studied ornament. His metaphors are generally correct,

times want that natural freshness which flows from immediate inspiration, and they not unfrequently approach to absolute conceits. Like several others of our most distinguished living poets, he is also a good deal of a mannerist, and too much addicted to copy from himself. But these faults are less apparent in the present than in any of Mr Moore's minor publications; and we look forward with considerable interest to the progress and termination of a work which has been so well begun.

Harrington, a Tale; and Ormond, a Tale; in 3 vols. By MARIA EDGEWORTH, &c. London, Hunter, &c.

1817.

(Concluded from page 522.)

THE Scene of the second tale is laid chiefly in Ireland; and it is, of course, infinitely more interesting than her elaborate apology for the Jews. Miss Edgeworth delights in delineating Irish