beauties, which the classical genius of antiquity had copied from these, rejected the one, as beneath the moral dignity of his character," and the other as "not that which justly gives heroic name to person or to poem." Accordingly, in defiance of predominant tastes, rising superior to the times, in which he lived, and trusting his reputation to the suffrages of the human race, and of the ages, which were yet to come, he has left us a poem, which will be read with admiration, until Homer and Virgil are forgotten.

Now, we ask if there be any reader so enamoured of the manner of SCOTT or MOORE, as to regret that it was not anticipated by MILTON. Oh no as Lord Camden sublimely observed, "Glory is the reward of science, and those, who deserve it, scorn all meaner views. It was not for gain that BACON, NEWTON, LOCKE, or MILTON instructed and delighted the world. When the book-seller offered MILTON five pounds for his PARADISE LOST, he did not reject it, and commit his poem to the flames. Nor did he accept the miserable pittance as the reward of his labour; he knew that the real price of his work was IMMorta, LITY, and that posterity would pay the debt!"

Mr. SCOTT generally strikes by a certain aggravation of the features of Nature, by the exaggeration of passion, by a sort of disproportion between causes and effects. Amplification is his forte, but it is, for the most part, amplification of the ideas of others. He always exhausts a thought, before he quits it. Then, cupressum scit simulare, and

conscious of his powers in this way, he sometimes loses sight of his hero, in a crowd of rural descriptions, frequently beautiful, always florid, but not unfrequently misplaced. The structure of his fable has no regard to simplicity; there is always a plot, often a riddle, and constantly "the riddle must be solved by love." He seems, likewise, to have repeated himself too often; and, some how or other, the reader, in the midst of "rocks, waters, woods," often thinks that he has heard all this before.

But if SCOTT appears sublime, by being too great, MOORE seems beautiful, or rather pretty, by being too little. From the reduction of his outline, his colours are condensed, his lights are concentrated, and his images have an excessive, although, by no means, a false brilliancy. On the contrary, and we think it much to his honour, it appears to us that both his lights and his colouring would bear to be extended over a much larger surface, without any apparent, or at least injurious, diminution of their effect. He is always lively, and his vivacity is unaffected. He is, however, too fond of cosmetics, as the Rhapsodist calls them, those turns of expression, as the critic in Gil Blas says, qui font beauté dans un ouvrage. He has given us Anacréon frisé, poudré, fanfreluché. In translation, sa pretention etait d'être fin comme l'ambre. Il mettait dans son petit style la recherche, que les coquettes mettent dans leur parure. Mais son pinceau n'est pas large, et son petit coloris excite toujours l'idée de mesquinerie.

But if ANACREON has suffered from him, we suspect that he has much more suffered from ANACREON. The Greek poet afforded his

translator some excuse for luxuriating in the version; and the translator has indulged himself to an excess, bordering upon licentiousness. This has given to most of his subsequent writings an impress of the To yuvaiμaver. We trust that the Epic poem, which he is said to be about to publish, will not abound with such sweet vices, nothing, in fact, being less consistent with the epic character. Whatever might have been the ambition of ANACREON, he never could have handled the lyre of HOMER, even although "the blood-stained chord" had been removed. We await the Epic poem,* with a degree of interest emanating rather from our conception of what he is capable of doing, than of any thing that he has as yet done; for if ScoTT seems to us to have stretched beyond his reach, MOORE appears to have descended below his level. He has latterly given the world some devotional poetry, in which, however, we think that we perceive the veteris vestigia flamma; l'enthousiasme de la devotion emprunte le langage de l'amour. We shall finish this note, by addressing to him the valediction of a great Prince to a great Minister, who was vir aliò laudatus, sed qui in stylo lasciviebat. The passage is curious, and may be new to some of our readers. Vale, mel gentium, ebur ex Etruria, laser Aretinum, ada

* Since writing the above, the promised Epic Poem has appeared under the form of an Oriental tale. We have no time to enter into the merits or demerits of this composition. The reader of it is already competent to decide how far the writer has justified the hopes or the apprehensions of the Rhapsodist.

mas supernas, tyberinum margaritum, Cilneorum smaragda, Jaspis singulorum, berille Porsennæ, carbunculum habeas, iva ourleμvæμev Tarla, μaλαγμα macharum !

(i) Tertullian is of opinion, that there are a great many things, that deserve to be treated with mockery and ridicule, lest they should derive advantitious weight from an attempt seriously to refute them. We have always thought this observation peculiarly applicable to the new doctrines in religion, morals, and politics, of which the present age has been so productive. HUME acknowledges his disappointment and mortification, at seeing his first effort at free-thinking “fall deadborn from the press," and pass unnoticed. This fully illustrates the justness of the opinion of Tertullian. If such was the effect of neglect upon a man of real genius and philosophical temperament, what effect must it produce upon those purblind drones, who furnish the world periodically with lumpish volumes of dull blasphemy, dissoluteness, and sedition. Incapable of attaining, or even aiming at, originality, they affect singularity, with little better success; for free-thinking, as it is absurdly called, is now so common, so vulgar, that it is likely to go out of fashion. There is a sort of muddiness of understanding, a kind of intellectual phlegm, that never can comprehend the profound observation of the Stagirite: πεπαιδυμένου γαρ εςτιν επι τοςούλον τ' ακρίβεσ επιζητειν, καθ' έκαςτον γενοσ, εφ' όσον ή του πραγματοσ φυσις επιδέχεται.

Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse,

More tunable, than needed lute or harp

To add more sweetness !

The origin of poetry can be traced only to a sort of vehement sensibility to the charms of nature, which must have been predominant in the primitive state of the world, and which diminishes, exactly, in proportion as society becomes methodized by what is termed civilization. This species of sensibility must have been found strongest in the first man, rising in the full perfection of his nature, and whose feelings were not blunted, by being, gradually, and insensibly, familiarized with the great spectacle of the universe. In a being so situated, language must have been the effect of inspiration; and, as we observe that a mind actuated by that sort of vehement sensibility, to which we allude, expresses its emotions in a tone and cadence quite different from the ordinary tone and cadence of social intercourse, it follows, with a degree of probability, approaching to certainty, that poetry and music, in our sense of the words, constituted the primary language of the first of human creatures.

But that vehement sensibility, which constitutes the very soul of poetry, is by no means confined to verse. On the contrary, it pervades the whole world of literature; or, at least, that region, which is totally unvisited by its vivifying power, must be considered, with regard to