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mies, and assured him, if he suffered himself to be conveyed to London, they would certainly put him to death. But all her entreaties were fruitless, she could not persuade him to believe her information. In all his answers he was positive that his enemies would not dare to attempt his life."

Thus it appears that the infatuation of the Stuarts consisted in a presumed miraculous exemption of Royal birth from the contingencies incident to human nature *.

Dr. King occasionally appears in the high character of a Philosopher, and probably would have made an excellent Biographer or Historian. The following remarks upon Friendship are of this superior kind of writing.

"A perfect friendship, as it is described by the ancients, can only be contracted between men of the greatest virtue, generosity, truth, and honour. Such a friendship requires that all things should be in common; and that one friend should not only venture, but be ready to lay down his life for the other. According to this definition of friendship, Cicero observes, that all the histories, from the earliest ages down to his time, had not recorded more than two or three friends; and I doubt, whether at this day we could add two or three pair more to the number. In our country, which is governed by money, and where every man is in pursuit of his own interest, it would be in vain to look for a real friendship.”

Dr. King then recommends the preservation of such amity as we are able to form, by having no money concerns with our friends. In p. 144 we have his golden rule for acquiring the love and esteem of every body, viz. "To speak evil of no man." We think that it might be improved by the addition of Bishop Beveridge, "Never speak well of a man before his face, nor ill of him behind his back."

We know that the following remarks concerning Criticisms on LaAinity are exceedingly just. We have heard sentences condemned as bald, though absolutely copied, by way of traps, from Cicero; and we should not give the quotation, were it not connected with Maittaire. Dr. King

"Tenunc delicias extra communia censes Ponendum, quia tu gallinæ filius albæ." Juvenal.

wrote a composition, which was sent by his friends to that Editor: "Maittaire marked eleven expressions, as unclassical. These were communicated to me in a letter, which my friends sent me to Oxford. The same evening, by return of the post, I answered nine of Maittaire's exceptions, and produced all my authorities from Virgil, Ovid, and Tibullus; and by the post following I sent authorities for the other two. I could not help remarking, that Maittaire, some little time before, had published new editions of those Poets from whence I drew my authorities, and had added a very copious index to every author; and in these indexes were to be found most of the phrases to which he had excepted in the Miltonis Epistola." The fact is, that such verbal criticisms must be absurd. All the Latin Dictionaries are compiled from the ancient classicks; and the words, though not possibly of the Augustan age, are of course such as were used by the Romans.

Dr. King (p. 154) exhibits one of these sapient criticks taking a phrase of Cicero, and spending three or four whole pages to prove that it was neither Latin nor sense!

We perfectly agree with Dr. King, that the art of speaking ought to be especially cultivated in the Universities, p. 170;" but we are obliged to pass the paragraph by, to make room for the following account of the consequences of permitting the clergy to marry, premising, that we know it to have originated in the debauchery of that class of men when compulsory bachelors:

"It was no small misfortune to the

cause of Christianity in this kingdom that when we reformed from popery, our Clergy, were permitted to marry; from that period their only care (which was natural, and must have been foreseen) was to provide for their wives and children; this the Dignitaries, who had ample revenues, could easily effect, with the loss, however, of that respect and veneration which they formerly received on account of their hospitality and numer ous charities; but the greatest part of the inferior Clergy were incapable of making a provision for sons and daughters, and soon left families of beggars in every part of the kingdom. As an Academician, and friend to the republic of letters, I have often wished, that the canons which forbid priests to marry were still

in force. To the celibacy of the Bishops we owe almost all those noble foundations which are established in both our Universities; but since the Refor mation, we can boast of few of the Episcopal order as benefactors to these seats of learning. The munificent donations of Laud and Sheldon in the last century, will, indeed, ever be remembered, but let it likewise be remembered, that these two prelates were unmarried." pp. 187, 188.

We have not room to say more; than that this is a cheerful nice drawing-room book before dinner; convenient either for dipping, or regular perusal.

2. Mazeppa: A Poem. By Lord Byron. 8vo. pp. 69. Murray.

[From the NEW TIMES.]

Italy, with all its charms of blue lakes and eternal sunshine, does not abound in Poets, and it should seem as if other Poets than its own felt the influence of that land of silk and slavery. Lord Byron's vigorous and original style has certainly received no obvious improvement since his residence on the shores of the Mediterranean, and his present poem forms no exception to the general rank of his Italian efforts. But he is a poetic genius; indolence may enfeeble his powers as it does those of all men, but it cannot extinguish them; carelessness of fame or contempt of criticism may debase his poetry by common-place aliusion or negligent arrangement, but the true fire still burns, and if it be only exposed to the air for a moment it flames out and vindicates its early brilliancy. Mazeppu is to us the least interesting of the Noble Bard's works. We can have no gratification in giving this opinion.-Lord Byron has drawn the circle for himself. He can raise no spirit beyond; within that narrow and gloomy ring he has great command, without it he is not more than the rest of the world. His characteristic was, to plunge into the depths of the place of torment that desponding and criminal thoughts make for themselves, and to smite our senses with the rapid view of that intense and burning preparation for the suffering rather of the spirit than of the body. He opened his pandemonium to us, yet not Milton's general and magnificent display of demoniac splendour; he turned our eyes from the majesty of Satan on his

throne to the misery that racked the apostate under his corslet and diadem,

The Poem opens with a sketch of the scene where Charles XII. of Swe. den and Mazeppa, with the remnant of their cavalry, halt after the first exhaustion of the flight. Charles cannot sleep, and some commendation of Mazeppa's horsemanship induces the old Hettman to speak of his early adventure. The King commands himn to relate it to beguile the time. "Well, Sire, with such a hope I'll track My seventy years of memory back; I think 'twas in my twentieth spring, Aye-'twas, when Casimir was King. John Casimir,-I was his page, Six summers in my earlier age; A learned Monarch, faith was he, And most unlike your Majesty."

The Poet has here made a mistake in his chronology. Norberg, the most favourable to Mazeppa's longevity, makes him but eighty when he died. The other Polish historians make him but seventy in 1708, the year before the battle of Pultowa, which was fought on the 27th of June, 1709. Thus he was probably in the nurse's arms at the time of his involv ing the Count's family in disturbance, or at best he could have been but ten years old. The description of John Casimir goes on with more truth than courtesy.

Having glanced at some of the defects, it is but justice to select a specimen of the passages in which Lord Byron has evinced his most conspicu ous talent, that of describing mixed mental and bodily sensations, with a force, an accuracy, and, if we may so speak, with a picturesqueness, rarely equalled.

Mazeppa, naked and tightly bound with thongs to the back and neck of a wild horse, which had been caught but the day before, is borne for three days, by the affrighted animal, through woods, across rivers, and at last enters upon one of those steppes, or vast plains, which divide from each other the haunts of the different Tartar tribes. The feelings of the hopeless rider, after having endured many long hours of excessive agony, fatigue, hunger, and thirst, are thus strongly painted ::

"The earth gave way, the skies roll'd
round,

I seem'd to sink upon the ground;
But err'd, for I was fastly bound.

My

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Still his sufferings continue, and are graduated to their close with extreme art by the noble writer. The description of the interminable waste over which Mazeppa passes is very striking.

"A boundless plain Spreads through the shadow of the night, And onward, onward, onward, seems, Like precipices in our dreams, To stretch beyond the sight; And here and there a speck of white, Or scatter'd spot of dusky green, In masses broke into the light, As rose the moon upon my right. But nought distinctly seen In the dim waste, would indicate The omen of a cottage gate; No twinkling taper from afar Stood like an hospitable star; Not even an ignis fatuus rose To make him merry with my woes: That very cheat had cheer'd me then! Although detected, welcome still, Reminding me, through every ill,

Of the abodes of men.

Onward we went-but slack and slow
His savage force at length o'erspent,
The drooping courser, faint and low,
All feebly foaming went.
A sickly infant bad had power
To guide him forward in that hour;

But useless all to me.

His new-born tameness nought avail'd, My limbs were bound; my force had fail'd,

Perchance, had they been free.
With feeble effort still I tried
To rend the bonds so starkly tied-

But still it was in vain ;

My limbs were only wrung the more,
And soon the idle strife gave o'er,

Which but prolong'd their pain;
The dizzy race seem'd almost done,
Although no goal was nearly won :
Some streaks announced the coming

sun

How slow, alas! he came!
Methought that mist of dawning gray,
Would never dapple into day;
How heavily it roll'd away-

Before the eastern Яlame
Rose crimson and deposed the stars,
And call'd the radiance from their cars,
And fill'd the earth from his deep throne,
With lonely lustre all his own.
Up rose the sun; the mists were curl'd
Back from the solitary world
Which lay around-behind-before:
What booted it to traverse o'er

Plain, forest, river? Man nor brute,
Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot,
Lay in the wild luxuriant soil;
No sign of travel-none of toil;
The very air was mute;

And not an insect's shrill small horn,
Nor matin bird's new voice was borne
From herb nor thicket. Many a werst,
Panting as if his heart would burst,
The weary brute still stagger'd on;
And still we were-or seem'd-alone.'

The horse at length falls exhausted and dies, while a herd of its free companions visit it, and fly by instinct from the sight of its human load: a raven completes the destined prey, and the narrator says:

"I saw his wing thro' twilight flit, And once so near me he alit,

I could have smote, but fack'd the
strength;

But the slight motion of my hand,
And feeble scratching of the sand,
Th' exerted throat's faint struggling
noise,

Which scarcely could be call'd a voice,
Together scared him off at length-
I know no more-my latest dream
Is something of a lovely star
Which fix'd my dull eyes from afar,
And went and came with wandering
beam,

And of the cold, dull, swimming, dense
Sensation of recurring sense,
And then subsiding back to death,
And then again a little breath,
A little thrill, a short suspense,

An icy sickness curdling o'er [brainMy heart, and sparks that cross'd my A gasp, a throb, a start of pain,

A sigh, and nothing more.

I woke Where was I?-Do I see
A human face look down on me?
And doth a roof above me close?
Do these limbs on a couch repose?
Is this a chamber where I lie ?
And is it mortal yon bright eye,
That watches me with gentle glance?
I clos'd my own again once more,
As doubtful that the former trance

Could not as yet be o'er.

A slender girl, long-haired, and tall, Sate watching by the cottage wall: The sparkle of her eye I caught, Even with my first return of thought; For ever and anon she threw

A praying, pitying glance on me With her black eyes so wild and free; I gazed, and gazed, until I knew No vision it could be."

Numerous are the images, in the course of the passages above quoted, which must strike every person of taste with admiration; and to which it would therefore be impertinent to

direct the Reader's attention. At the same time, we may be allowed to add our suffrage, in one or two instances, to the general approbation. Thus, we doubt not, that the most rigid critic must be struck with the pure and simple expression, which in so few words paints the sun rise, and its natural effect in rendering the stars invisible.

"The Eastern flame

Rose crimson, and deposed the stars."

Here is an implied personification, conveying an idea of majesty, at least equal to the idea of beauty conveyed in Ben Jonson's direct personification of morning

"Who now is rising from her blushing [stars."

wars,

And with her rosy hand, puts back the

Nor is there less of poetical tact in "the lonely lustre" of the Sun after it had risen; or in "the solitary world," which lay around, behind, and before the hopeless traveller; for to him, at the moment, the boundless desert was a world of loneliness, and the sun, instead of calling the living creation to labour or enjoyment, must have seemed to shine in idle and useless splendour. This identification of the Poet's feelings, with those of the imaginary being whom he describes, is one great source, perhaps the greatest, of Lord Byron's popularity. It is a decisive mark of genius; and when we contemplate such proofs of it, as he has here given, and reflect on some other applications of his talents, we cannot restrain the exclamation, O si sic omnia!

But the pamphlet contains, in addition, an Ode to Venice, in the usual deploring strain for the loss of "Liberty by Despots," of a State the most tyrannical of all Oligarchies, and broken up by a Republican army, under the model of Republicans, Buonaparte. A brief prose narrative finishes the Work.

3. Tales of the Hall. By the Rev. Geo. Crabbe, LL.B. In two Vols. 8vo. pp. 326, 353. Murray.

IT would be unjust to this admirable delineator of the human mind, if, before we enter into the merits of his Poetry, we were to neglect the grateful feelings which dictated the following sentiments in prose. For more than the "forty years" therein noticed, the writer of this article has

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respected the Author, and duly appreciated his writings. In a neat Dedication to the Duchess of Rutland, Mr. Crabbe says,

"It is the privilege of those who are placed in that elevated situation to which your Grace is an ornament, that they give honour to the person upon whom they confer a favour. When I dedicate to your Grace the fruits of many years, and speak of my debt to the House of Rutland, I feel that I am not without pride in the confession, nor insensible to the honour which such gratitude implies. Forty years have elapsed since this debt commenced. On my entrance into the cares of life, and while contending with its difficulties, a Duke and Duchess of Rutland observed and protected me-in my progress a Duke and Duchess of Rutland favoured and assisted me-and, when I am retiring from the world, a Duke and Duchess of Rutland receive my thanks, and accept my offering. All, even in this world of mutability, is not change: I have experienced unvaried favour - I have felt undiminished respect.

"With the most grateful remembrance of what I owe, and the most sincere conviction of the little I can return, I present these pages to your Grace's acceptance."

From a Preface which will be

perused with pleasure and satisfaction, an extract must also be taken. After noticing the usual apologies for an Author's appearance in print, Mr. Crabbe observes,

"I am neither so young nor so old, so much engaged by one pursuit, or by many, I am not so urged by want, or so stimulated by a desire of public benefit, that I can borrow one apology from the many which I have named."

"If there be any combination of circumstances which may be supposed to affect the mind of a reader, and in some

degree to influence his judgment, the junction of youth, beauty, and merit in a female writer may be allowed to do this; and yet one of the most forbidding of titles is Poems by a very young Lady,' and this although beauty and merit were largely insinuated. Ladies, it is true, have of late little need of any indulgence as authors, and names may readily be found which rather excite the envy of man than plead for his lenity. Our estimation of Title also in a writer has materially varied from that of our predecessors; Poems by a Nobleman' would create a very different sensation in our minds from that which was formerly excited when they were so announced.

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nounced. A noble author had then no pretensions to a seat so secure on the sacred hill,' that authors not noble, and critics not gentle, dared not attack; and they delighted to take revenge by their contempt and derision of the poet, for the pain which their submission and respect to the man had cost them. But in our times we find that a nobleman writes, not merely as well, but better than other men; insomuch that readers in general begin to fancy that the Muses have relinquished their old partiality for rags and a garret, and are become altogether aristocratical in their choice. A conceit so well supported by fact would be readily admitted, did it not appear at the same time, that there were in the higher ranks of society, men who could write as tamely, or as absurdly, as they had ever been accused of doing. We may, therefore, regard the works of any noble author as extraordinary productions; but must not found any theory upon them; and, notwithstanding their appearance, must look on genius and talent as we are wont to do on time and chance, that happen indifferently to all mankind. "But whatever influence any peculiar situation of a writer might have, it cannot be a benefit to me, who have no such peculiarity. I must rely upon the willingness of my readers to be pleased with that which was designed to give them pleasure, and upon the cordiality which naturally springs from a remem brance of our having before parted without any feeling of disgust on the one side, or of mortification on the other.

"With this hope I would conclude the present subject; but, I am called upon by duty to acknowledge my obligations, and more especially for two of the following Tales: the Story of Lady Barbara, in Book XVI. and that of Ellen in Book XVIII. The first of these I owe to the kindness of a fair friend, who will, I hope, accept the thanks which I very gratefully pay, and pardon me if I have not given to her relation the advantages which she had so much reason to expect. The other story, that of Ellen, could I give it in the language of him who related it to me, would please and affect my readers. It is by no means my only debt, though the one I now more particularly acknowledge; for who shall describe all that he gains in the social, the unrestrained, and the frequent conversations with a friend, who is at once communicative and judicious?-whose opinions, on all subjects of a literary kind, are founded on good taste, and exquisite feeling? It is one of the greatest pleasures of my

memory' to recal in absence those conversations; and if I do not in direct terms mention with whom I conversed, it is both because I have no permission, and my readers will have no doubt."

"I have one observation more to of fer. It may appear to some that a Minister of Religion, in the decline of life, should have no leisure for such amusements as these; and for them I have no reply; but to those who are more indulgent to the propensities, the studies, and the habits of mankind, 1 offer some apology when I produce these volumes, not as the occupations of my life, but the fruits of my leisure, the employ ment of that time which, if not given to them had passed in the vacuity of unrecorded idleness; or had been lost in the indulgence of unregistered thoughts and fancies, that melt away in the instant they are conceived, and leave not a wreck behind.""

If we have thus long detained our Readers from a specimen of the fascinating "Tales of the Hall," we doubt not of receiving pardon, after having presented to them such manly, such ingenuous Prose.

Ever since" The Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer, poets who have dealt much in narrative have generally been anxious to string together their tales by some connecting chain, however slight. "The Tales of the Hall" are in this respect quite dramatic. The Hall is the residence of George, the elder of two brothers, or rather half brothers, who has been more fortunate than Richard in his pecuniary affairs, though less so in his domestic connexions. The circumstances which have separated the brethren through the greater portion of their respective lives, are told with great simplicity and ease, as are the invitation and journey of the younger to the Hall, their meeting and the gradual recurrence of fraternal feelings to the bosom of each. Each is naturally led to recite his own adventures: and Richard, who has been a sailor, thus Powerfully describes an incident counected with the too common dangers of his profession :

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