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ballads consists in their quaintness; and that to adopt their obsolete phraseology is to appropriate their beauties. This is an unfortunate mistake. The authors of those compositions wrote the best language with which they were acquainted; and those who conceive that the modern style is incapable of expressing simplicity and feeling, with truth, need only turn to the ballads of Gay and Goldsmith. Gay is, indeed, the most perfect model for the English ballad. We read and repeat his verses without satiety; while we should never again endure to be told, that

• Merrily merrily rung the bells,

The bells of St. Michael's tower,
When Richard Penlake and Rebecca his wife
Arrived at the church-door.' (dower)

This is the right butter-woman's rank to market. To the Burnie Bee*. There is a considerable display of sportive fancy in this little piece, which we shall therefore extract:

• Blythe son of summer, furl thy filmy wing,
Alight beside me on this bank of moss;
Yet to its sides the lingering shadows cling,
And sparkling dews the dark-green tufts imboss.

• Here may'st thou freely quaff the nectar'd sweet
That in the violet's purple chalice hides,
Here on the lily scent thy fringed feet,

Or with the wild-thyme's balm anoint thy sides.
• Back o'er thy shoulders throw those ruby shards
With many a tiny coal-black freckle deckt,
My watchful look thy loitering saunter guards,
My ready hand thy footstep shall protect.
• Daunted by me beneath this trembling bough
On forked wing no greedy swallow sails,
No hopping sparrow pries for food below,
Nor evet lurks, nor dusky blindworm trails.

• Nor shall the swarthy gaoler for thy way
His grate of twinkling threads successful strain,
With venom'd trunk thy writhing members slay,
Or from thy heart the reeking life's-blood drain.

• Forego thy wheeling in the sunny air
Thy glancing to the envious insects round,
To the dim calmness of my bower repair,
Silence and Coolness keep its hallowed ground.

Here to the elves who sleep in flowers by day
Thy softest hum in lulling whispers pour,

* A provincial name of the beetle Coccinella, or lady-bird.'

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Or o'er the lovely band thy shield display
1 When blue-eyed twilight sheds her dewy shower.
• So shall the fairy-train by glow-worm light

With rainbow tints thy folding pennons fret,
Thy scaly breast in deeper azure dight,
Thy burnish'd armour speck with glossier jet.

• With viewless fingers weave thy wintry tent,
And line with gossamer thy pendant cell,
Safe in the rift of some lone ruin pent
Where ivy shelters from the storm-wind fell.

• Blest if like thee I cropt with heedless spoil
The gifts of youth and pleasure in their bloom,
Doom'd for no coming winter's want to toil,

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Fit for the spring that waits beyond the tomb.'
The idea of this poem seems to have been suggested by
Lovelace's charming Ode to the Grasshopper; the general plan
of which he took from Anacreon:

"O thou that swing'st upon the waving hair
Of some well-filled oaten beard,

Drunk ev'ry night with a delicious tear,

Dropt thee from heav'n, where now thou'rt rear'd.

LOVELACE.

The word shards,' in the third stanza, however correct, is not poetical, and ought to have been rejected.

Inscriptions, by Robert Southey. When we say that these inscriptions remind us of those which were published by Akenside, we pay Mr. Southey a lower compliment than many of our readers might suppose. The general fault of these pieces is that they are too long, and that the lines, by running into each other, become prosaic. Tameness, too, is substituted here for simplicity; the absence of superfluous ornament is not a sufficient recommendation of style; it should come forth naturali pulchritudini. We meet with no felicity of expression, nor any novelty of thought, which can furnish an interesting extract.

Stanzas written on the Sea-Shore, in 1792, signed by Mrs. Opie, contain much good sense, though not expressed with any remarkable poetical force.

Living without God in the World. By Charles Lamb. This gentleman must be some preternatural Being, for he proclaims,

I see a mighty arm, by man unseen.'

We should therefore suppose him to be the shadow of an author; and indeed there is nothing very substantial in his lines. The Sons of Genius. We cannot afford the praise either of poetical energy or elegance to this composition. The lines are heavy and monotonous, and there is not sufficient vigour

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in the thoughts to atone for the metrical defects. The rhimes are inaccurate: play and sea, war and shore, are made to correspond. We hope that the author will produce better proofs than the present, of his claim to be admitted among the lawful sons of Genius. This poem inclines to the bend sinister.

Song, by Mrs. Opie. A pretty, sentimental trifle.

The Song of Pleasure. We have found no pleasure in perusing this song: it consists of a few common images, borrowed from former poets, and not decorated by new expressions.

To Indolence. This is another ode in blank verse; its greatest peculiarity is that, notwithstanding the title, it appears about the middle of the poem that it is not addressed to Indolence, but to her sister Leisure.' This is quite a new way of writing, but we observe nothing else remarkable in the composition.

The Filbert. "There can be no kernel in this light nut *;" unless the poem be intended to satirize somebody. If such were the author's design, he ought to have afforded us some means of guessing at his object.

Sonnets. These are all nearly equal in merit. That the reader may determine what degree of praise they deserve, we shall insert two, one of which is a very successful parody on the serious pieces:

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How soothing sweet methinks it is to walk

By moonlight, when the still delicious calm
Sheds o'er the love-lorn soul a grateful balm,
And woos the woe to peace! O then I talk,
Rapt in myself as slow I pace along,

Of hopeless Love, and weep upon my wounds,
Soft as the hollow gale's expiring sounds,

Soft as the veiled virgin's evening song,
Soft as mild Melancholy's noiseless tread.
Thus breathing many a plaint and many a sigh,
I gaze the moon with fondly-fixed eye
Musing on many a lovely vision fled
Hopeless and sad, till down I sink to rest,
By sorrow, silence, solitude, opprest.'-

That gooseberry-bush attracts my wandering eyes,
Whose vivid leaves so beautifully green
First opening in the early spring are seen;
I sit and gaze, and cheerful thoughts arise
Of that delightful season drawing near

When those grey woods shall don their summer dress
And ring with warbled love and happiness.
I sit and think that soon the advancing year

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With golden flowers shall star the verdant vale.

Then may the enthusiast Youth at eve's lone hour,
Led by mild Melancholy's placid power,

Go listen to the soothing nightingale
And feed on meditation; while that I

Remain at home and feed on gooseberry-pye.'

In a sonnet to Personification, we observe a very unwarrantable extension of the poetical licence.

• Discord and Death, and stern defying Fate,
Walk'd o'er the earth, destroying. Such is PER-
SONIFICATION. He whom she employs
To deck her labors, and increase her joys.'

This passage reminds us of those verses which were
"Written by William Prynne, Esquire, the
Year of our Lord 1633."

The Killcrop. This dialogue turns on a popular superstition, which supposes that a dæmon is substituted occasionally for a child, to the vexation of some honest peasant. The name given to the supposititious child is Killcrop; -a passage to this purpose is quoted from Luther's works.

The Spirit. This story is told with some humour, and will be read with pleasure by those who are fond of nursery-tales. Eclogue, by Robert Southey; The last of the Family. An affecting poem might be written on this subject, but Mr. S. has proved so very correct in his imitation of the gossipping of Farmer James and Farmer Gregory, that he has taken off much from the gravity as well as the interest of the piece.

Ode to St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall. This ode presents nothing which we are tempted to extract. The rhimes are very incorrect: recal and soul, sea and away, philosophy and eye, are not admissible in a short poem.

The Tempest. We observe, in the measure and sentiments of this poem, an imitation of Dr. Beattie's Hermit, but certainly no improvement on the original. Dr. Beattie's verses were evidently founded on some lines of the epitaph on Bion, by Moschus;

Αι, αι, ἄι μαλακαι, επαν κατα καπου ολώνται, &c. but the despondency of the Grecian poet, on the subject of a future state, has been happily corrected by the hopes of the Christian bard.

The Hermit-Boy. By A. S. Cottle. This story is taken from one of Fontaine's tales: Les Oies de Frere Philippe. It is here attempted in the measure of Mr. Lewis's Alonzo the Bold and the Fair Imogene, with no peculiar felicity.

The Seas. The author of this piece was probably instructed by a schoolmaster, like him who is mentioned by Quintillian, whose

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whose precept was constantly σκοτίζον, be obscure. We have not the honour of understanding this gentleman's language. It is too peregrinate for us.

Passages, extracted from imitative "Verses on Alexander's Expedition down the Hydaspes and the Indus, to the Indian Ocean," printed in 1792, but not published. These verses, which have the signature of Dr. Beddoes, are intended (we suppose) to resemble the poetry of the Botanic Garden. In some passages, the imitation is pretty correct: but, in general, the tone and finishing are unequal to the productions of Dr. Darwin.

Some of Dr.Beddoes's opening lines will remind our readers strongly of the Botanic Garden:

• At first low murmurs creep; at length the bands
Ope their glad lips, and smite their joyous hands,
Till land and waters pour exulting cries,

And pealing shouts assail the Indian skies'

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It is remarkable that the allegorical personages in Dr. Darwin's poem exhibit only two actions; they either wave their locks, or clap their hands. -The verses on the premature death of Alexander are much superior to those which we have just quoted:

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• But Earth's fond hope how blasted in its bloom!
How feels a world convulsed thy early doom!
What mingling sounds of woe and outrage rise:
How wild the eddying dust of ruin flies!
As frantic Chiefs the Master's pile deface,
Rend his strong walls and shake the deep-laid base.
Mourn, India, mourn-The womb of future time
Teems with the fruit of each portentous crime.
The Crescent onwards guides consuming hosts,
And Carnage dogs the Cross along thy coasts;
From Christian strands, the rage accursed of gain
Wafts all the Furies in its baleful train,
Their eye-ball strained, impatient of the way,
They snuff, with nostril broad, the distant prey.
- And now the Rout pollutes the hallowed shore
That nursed young Art and infant Science bore;
Fierce in the van, her fire-brand Warfare waves;
Dire at her heels the cry of hell-hounds raves:
Roused by the yell, the Greedy and the Bold
'Start to the savage chace of blood and gold.'

We must observe, on one line,

That nursed young Art and infant Science bore ;' that it appears to be taken from a very good line by Mr. Hayley, in which he describes India as

"The soil that infant Art and letters bore."

The strain of these verses, however, is generally above the

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