We shall make one extract more, lest the author should suppose that, from pique or resentment, we were desirous of concealing his merit from the world.

• Sonnet to Sapphira.

• Oft as the feather'd choirs, with descant shrill,
Wake from its curtain'd sleep the infant day;
Oft as the Sun emits his fiercest ray,
Oft as he sinks behind the distant hill;
So oft my thoughts révert, with sweetest pain,
To thee, Sapphira, day-spring of my soul;
Nor would I banish tempered grief's control,
For all the wealth that earth and seas contain.
Whene'er my solitary footsteps roam,
To thee my mind, unfettered, swiftly flees,
A pardon'd truant from its native home;
Frequent I waft a kiss into the air,
And bid the Genius of the southern breeze
The balmy freightage to Sapphira bear.'"

We have seen nothing in this collection to induce us to retract the judgment which we formerly passed on Mr. C's poetical talents. We know not that we ever called in question the liveliness of his imagination: but we cannot allow that he possesses, in a great degree, either judgment or taste,

Art. 31. An Essay on the Passions: with other Poems. By A. Donoughue. 8vo. pp. 140. Printed at Shrewsbury for Owen, Welshpool: London, Champante and Whitrow. 1799.

We know not what the personal merit or misfortunes of this young author may be but, if he be a native or an inhabitant of Welshpool, the place of publication, he must have possessed some means of acquiring favour with which we are unacquainted; as the list of his subscribers seems to have been chiefly furnished from that

town.

We should be sorry to check rising genius, or to diminish the zeal of the anthor's friends, by severity of censure. Yet our duty to the public, and indeed to ourselves, will not allow us to recommend this pamphlet to readers of nice discernment and taste. The lines are often rough, and the ideas distorted by aukward struggles at metaphor and poetical ornament; the rhymes are frequently unwarrantable, and the English is not always grammatical:-but, by the account which Mr. D. gives of his circumstances, we may suppose that the publication was precipitated by the pressure of penury, before sufficient reading and study had formed his taste for composition, or he had leisure for revising and polishing his pieces.

We do not recollect, in all our laborious reading, to have met with-keen sensations shooting along the heart the wheels of feeling-enchantment's swell-attune the glow-Favonius warbles -chase (for seek) happiness-&c. These and many more inac curacies appear in the initial poem; and yet, here and there, we have something like poetry that is nearly correct. The description of pity seems to merit praise unmixed with blame. After having delineated lineated the different species of insanity lodged in the cells of Bedlam, the author exclaims : :

• But turn from scenes like these, my frighted Muse!
To Pity's empire, and her lovelier views.
How wide, how wonderful th' attractive ties,
That link the heart in secret sympathies!
As round the changeful scenes of life appear,
We love, we hate, we weep, we hope, we fear.
Nor yet for self the keenest pangs we feel,
For other's woes, more genial tears will steal.
Thou tender martyr of condolence! tell,
How strong the tides that social bosoms swell!
Did e'er thy soul so true to nature's tone,
So deeply weep for sorrows of thine own?
Nor e'en will sympathetic grief suffice;
Imagin'd pains, fictitious woes will rise.
How often at Imagination's call,
Will sighs ascend, and ready torrents fall?
Observe the maid as o'er the false romance
She bends, and flutters in delirious trance:
Her throbbing breast concordant measures keeps,
Now laughs with rapture, now with anguish weeps,
See how each feeling, on her face pourtray'd,
Absorbs the reader, and o'ercomes the maid.'

As this is the longest and most important poem in the collection, we shall confine our criticisms to its defects. The author does not know, perhaps, that there are 16 unfair rhymes in this piece :-nor that his partiality, or convenience, has terminated six lines with the word vein; the rhyme to four of which is strain. Typographical errors, of which several occur in the works of authors long used to the press, we can easily pardon when they escape the notice of inex perience; and, approaching the end of this poem, we must own that the complaints of penury which escape this young bard, and his pathetic address to "the society lately established for the relief of indigent genius," soften our rigour; and make us hope, as sparks of genius are discoverable in these early essays, that his case will be taken into consideration by this liberal and laudable institution:

• Which freely gives, yet never sounds the deed
Nor claims a plaudit for compassion's meed.
Extatic hope! no more shall genius strive,
With want calamitous, nor fear to live;
No bard despondent break the lyric wire,
Nor future Chattertons for want expire;
No ill-starr'd youth be doom'd to bloom in vain ;

No Otway raise the unrewarded strain.'

J

Among the subsequent pieces, amounting to more than twenty, the description of Powis Castle and its Environs is perhaps the best; and among descriptive and encomiastic poems, it deserves an honour able niche.

Ar

Art. 32. Affectation; or the Close of the Eighteenth Century: A Satire, in Dialogue. By Gratiano Park. Part the First. 4to.

IS.

Lee. 1799.

Stulta est clementia-peritura parcere charte. Let not the satirist regard the present scarcity of linen rags, and the consequent dearness of paper; and as for the critics, he needs not to be alarmed at them. According to this modern Juvenal, their approbation is rather to be deprecated than courted, since to please the critics is the loss of fame. In course he has not been solicitous of travelling in this " Road to Ruin;" and indeed he has taken care to prevent the murden of his fame by our unqualified commendation. Yet we must do him justice, however it may put him in a passion, and lead him to consider himself as an undone poet:-but Mr. Park, perhaps, may be tinctured a little with the vice against which he points his satire, when he pretends to regard critical praise as dangerous; and should we be right in our conjecture, it may furnish him with a hint for his second part. Moreover, we advise him to recollect that a satirist may be satirized; and that, by the use of improper epithets, he may excite a smile against himself. How can a man be modest, who deals in, puffing quackery?-Mr. P. may improve as he proceeds, since he is not without poetic energy; as the following satirical lines on Pizarro

will shew:

1

Lo! Brinsley, of the stage forgetful long,
Now turns imperial KOTZEBUE to song!
With lacker, leather, trumpet, musket, gun,
Altar and phosphor, lion and full sun;
Lumb'ring he loads the dull inertive mass,
Nor brightens into gold the sterling brass :
Incongruous scenes, show, song, and storm proceed,
Men roar, and women rant, and chieftains bleed :
A base deserter from his country's side,
Reforms man's rudeness, and is Nature's pride;
A hero, whom his monarch's safety arms,
Yet guided only by a woman's charms,
Pines, droops, surrenders, if his mistress scold;
Tho' brave, defenceless; and, tho' raging, cold;
A harlot, fierce, intolerant, and vain,
Pours from her stormy breast mild Virtue's strain;
You'd swear, her truths so moral, so divine,
'Tis David's son, or else some concubine,

Has stol'n his proverbs, and gives line for line.'

'You'd swear' is a vulgarity, and the passage would have been better had the whole triplet been omitted, • Bid AFFECTATION hail,' in p. 13. is not, surely, an order to Affectation to call some body; the author must intend that the muse should hail Affectation.

Art. 33. Management: A Comedy, in Five Acts. As performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden. By Frederic Reynolds. 8vo. 25. Longman and Rees.

"the

Some allowance, we confess, must be made to the dramatist in the construction and conduct of his fable: but he ought to exercise a little moderation in drawing on our belief. In painting manners living as they rise," in laughing at fashionable follies, and in exposing prevailing vices, high colouring may be necessary, and ought not to be condemned; yet, after every allowance which we make to the play-wright, we cannot tolerate violent offences against nature and credibility. We grant Mr. Reynolds the merit of having made some good strokes at the fashionable world: but on his play, as a whole, we cannot bestow any great commendation. As he seems to understand the art of keeping things alive on the boards, it may go off with tolerable effect but the mere jumble of incidents, and the collision of unnatural characters, producing bustle and embarrassment, working at cross-purposes, and saying and doing what was really never said and done by persons in their supposed circumstances, cannot constitute a good play. In the present drama, there is too much of this, -as in some of Mr. R.'s former productions.

Some of our men of fashion may perhaps be satirized in the person of Lavish; an idea of whose character will be furnished by the following short scene :

• Enter LAVISH.

• Lavish. Oh! if I go on in this close saving way only six months longer, I shall be able to return to town and dash like the best of them :-never was such a hand at buying bargains.-Frank, come here, you rogue:-just now, at Squire Brozier's sale, what do you think I gave for a curricle?-only forty pounds!-there, there's economy for you.

• Frank. Économy!-begging your pardon, Sir, I see no economy in buying what you don't want.

Lavish. How?-would you let a bargain slip through your fingers, you extravagant rascal?

• Frank. No-but you've no horses, Sir; and a curricle's useless

• Lavish. That's what I said: says I, a curricle is useless without horses, so I bought a pair directly.

• Frank. Bought a pair?

Lavish. Ay, gave a hundred and twenty pounds for them-to be sure it's money; but one's own carriage saves posting and drivers: in short, the worst come to the worst, 'tis but a hundred and fifty pounds, and I'll save it a thousand ways. Who are you, Sir? (10 a Workman.)

• Workman. I have finish'd that job, all but fixing up the statue, Sir; r; and now I come about the billiard-room:-but, to speak honestly, it is not worth repairing.

Lavish. So I thought; I thought it wasn't worth repairing. • Workman. No, Sir; and a new room will not cost above three hundred pounds:-but then to be sure it will be elegant and lasting. Lavish. So it will, and the first expence is the least; so up with the new room. (Workman exit.) - And now to finish my vindication to Juliana-(Sits at the table and writes);" Your late mother mother was not only my relation, but my friend and benefactress, and on Sir Hervey's one day reprobating her conduct with unusual asperity, gratitude prompted me to defend it perhaps more warmly than I ought, and a duel was the result." (Knocking at the door.) -See "who's there.-(FRANK exit.) -But what signifies writing? while she's immured in her present den, I haven't a chance of success. -Mrs. Dazzle formerly seduced me into some gallantries, and a disappointed widow is the devil.'

The epilogue, written by Mr. Colman, and spoken by Fawcett in the character of Mist, the manager of a country play-house, could not fail of being well received.

Art. 34. The East Indian; a Comedy. Translated from the German of Augustus Von Kotzebue. By A. Thomson, Author of Whist, &c. 8vo. 2s. Longman and Rees. 1799. This comedy appears in a less exceptionable form, in the present publication, than in the "German Miscellany," which gave it to the world several years ago, under the title of Indians in England." Still, however, it partakes too much of the defects of the Teutonic Drama,

Manserunt, bodieque manent vestigia ruris.

For some of its errors, however, our own stage may be accountable; since the character of Gurli, the child of nature in this piece, bears a resemblance too close to be accidental, to a similar personage in a farce written by Kelly: that character was taken from Marmontel's Coraly, and here, heaven help us ! has the imitative shadow risen again before us. Where will this literary traffic terminate? Should Mr. Kotzebue continue to engross the public favour, by rewriting the works of our own dramatists, he has still an ample career before him. Congreve, Dryden, Cibber, Farquhar, and many others, remain to be put to the torture. All the French writers, too, are still in reserve, from

"The frippery of crucified Moliere,"

to the lightest summer-fly of the Parisian theatres. Never surely was the taste of the British Public seen at so low an ebb, as in their condescension to admire a foreigner for his plagiarisms from very inferior writers of this country. That our manners are ill represented by Kotzebue is a fault not to be severely charged on a stranger: but that the distorted resemblance should be applauded among ourselves, and transferred to our own canvas, is certainly an impeachment of the national discernment. Can we discover, for example, in the following passage, either delicacy or elevation of sentiment? though it be intended to convey the feelings of a man of worth and honour, an English Baronet, an injured husband, and an insulted father!

Liddy. Unhappy party-spirit, in so small a family. • Sir John. Who is to blame? Is it not your mother? Who torments me from breakfast time to the hour of supper? Who is it, that throws my unmerited bankruptcy in my teeth, with every scanty morsel that I eat? Who despises my good burgher's blood, and talks so big of her German ancestors? Who is it that suffers me to starve? Who talks our tenants out of their money, and squanders REV. JAN. 1300.

H

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