Have you not known a second leave her
In strong convulsions or a fever?
And can you doubt the tales you've heard
Of what has happened from a third?
All on that magic LIST depends;
Fame, fortune, fashion, lovers, friends:
'Tis that which gratifies or vexes
All ranks, all ages, and both sexes.
If once to Almack's you belong,
Like monarchs, you can do no wrong;
But, banished thence on Wednesday night,
By Jove, you can do nothing right.

'There, baffled Cupid points his darts
With surer aim, at jaded hearts;
And Hymen, lurking in the porch,
But half conceals his lighted torch.
Hence the petitions and addresses
So humble to the patronesses;
The messages and notes, by dozens,
From their Welch aunts, and twentieth cousins,
Who hope to get their daughters in
By proving they are founder's kin.
Hence the smart miniatures enclosed
Of unknown candidates proposed;
Hence is the fair divan at Willis's
Beset with Corydons and Phillises,
Trying, with perseverance steady,
First one, and then another lady,
Who oft, you've told me, don't agree,
But clash like law and equity;
Some for the rules in all their vigour,
Others to mitigate their rigour.

How shall my Muse, with colours faint

And pencil blunt, aspire to paint

Their high-raised hopes, their chilling fears,
Entreaties, threatenings, smiles, and tears!

The vainest beauty will renounce

Her newly smuggled blonde or flounce;
The gamester leave a raw beginner ;
The diner-out forego his dinner;
The stern reformer change his notions,
And wave his notices of motions;
The bold become an abject croucher,
And the grave giggle for a voucher;
Too happy those who fail to nick it
In stumbling on a single ticket.

See, all bow down-maids, widows, wives
As sentenced culprits beg their lives,
As lovers court their fair ones' graces,
As politicians sue for places;

H 2

166307

So

So these, by sanguine hopes amused,
Solicit, and are so refused.'

A shower in Hyde Park on a Sunday is well sketched in the

following lines:

10

But, O! the treachery of our weather,

When Sunday-folks are met together!
Its tempting brightness scarce matured,
How suddenly the day's obscured!

Bless me, how dark! Thou threatening cloud,
Pity the un-umbrella'd crowd.

The cloud rolls onward with the breeze.

First, pattering on the distant trees

The rain-drops fall- then quicker, denser,

On many a parasol and spencer :
Soon drenching, with no mercy on it,
The straw and silk of many a bonnet.
Think of their hapless owners fretting,

While feathers, crape, and gauze are wetting!
Think of the pang to well-dressed girls,
When, pinched in vain, their hair uncurls,
And ringlets from each lovely pate
Hang mathematically straight!
As off, on every side, they scour,
Still beats the persecuting shower,
Till, on the thirsty gravel smoking,
It fairly earns the name of soaking.
Breathless they scud; some helter-skelter
To carriages, and some for shelter;
Lisping to coachmen drunk or dumb
In numbers while no numbers come.
Some in their clinging clothes so lank,
Others so bouncing, all so blank,

With sarsnets stained, with stockings splashed,
With muslins prematurely washed,

Enraged, resigned, in tears, or frowning,
Look as if just escaped from drowning;
While anxious thoughts pursue them home,

Whence their next Sunday-dress must come.'

Where so much is excellent, we must restrain our wishes to make citations, referring our readers to the work itself; which is one of the happiest specimens of easy and polished verse, of pleasing banter and lively wit, that it has been our fate for many years to have noticed.

The lines on Ampthill Park were noticed in the Monthly Review when they appeared in the form of a separate publication. (See vol. lxxxviii. p. 433.)

Art. 17. Cumnor; or, the Bugle-Horn, a Tragedy: with other Dramatic Dialogues, and Miscellaneous Poems. By Elijah Barwell Impey. 12mo. pp. 284. Boards. Longman and Co.

1822.

19

It would be unjust to deny that the tragedy of Cumnor, which is the first piece in this collection, has many beauties; though it would, at the same time, be somewhat exaggerated praise to assert that those beauties are of the highest order. Several passages of it testify a cultured if not a poetical mind; and Mr. Impey seems, on some occasions, to have caught, if not the fire, at least the manner, of some of our early dramatic writers.—The title will probably, at the first glance, have suggested to the reader that this drama is founded on the highly-wrought and spirited romance of Kenilworth ; a romance which abounds with too many dramatic incidents, and is, generally speaking, too dramatic in its character, not to have furnished to more than one writer the idea of making it the basis of a regular drama. Mr. Impey, however, does not appear to have constructed it for the theatre; and we are inclined to think that his rigid, and in our opinion unnecessary, observance of the unities, by circumscribing his play within too narrow a duration, has for that reason rendered it too barren of striking and sudden situations (to use the theatrical phraseology) to have passed the ordeal of the green-room. As a dramatic poem, notwithstanding, it has an equitable claim to an approving verdict: but our praise must be tempered and restrained, for Mr. Impey is not wholly exempt from rebuke on the score of negligence and incorrectness,

We must not suppress our objection to a deficiency which is, in a great degree, destructive of the effect that every dramatic author, whether he writes for the theatre or the closet, should endeavor to preserve entire. Our meaning is this. From a feeling in some sort natural to an enamoured perusal of the exquisite production from which he has derived his materials, and a familiarity with its incidents, the author of the play has evidently left unexplained many circumstances which it is impossible to understand without a special reference to Kenilworth itself. He therefore leaps all at once in medias res; forgetting that the auditor in the theatre, or the reader in the closet, is not necessarily acquainted with all that has taken place before the time of his action commences; and that the play, for that reason, is full of allusions to much which the play alone does not sufficiently explain.

Some departure from the romance was perhaps necessary to the drama. Tressilian is killed by Leicester at Cumnor in a duel, instead of being engaged in the bloodless contest in which we find him in the novel; and both Lamborn and Forster are somewhat more conscientious villains, than they appear as they came from the hand of the master-artist. We have not room for much extract: but we will quote a part of the scene in which Amy, in the midst of Leicester's endearments, is visited by filial compunctions which obtrude themselves on their "bower of bliss."

Amy.

Farewell! ye days Sunbright, serene, calm morn, and peaceful eve, Free mirth, and sound repose; ere fear, first born Of conscious guile, o'ercast with clouds the dawn, And marr'd love's jubilee. Ah! rebel love,

H 3

Ere

Ere thou with filial tenderness did'st war,
Bursting the flowery knot which held thee coupled
With that sweet yoke-fellow. O, fare ye well Î
For ye are flown for aye!

• Leices.
Why then forget them,
And think on these, these golden hours, when love
Shatters his chains, and freely springs beyond
The barriers of cross age. Hence with the past,
Now is our banquet, then we did but fast:
Away! these sad forebodings are the brood
Of fancy, gender'd in her lonely mood,
Away, my love, away!'

We insert also the song of the minstrel :

Hark! hark! In the hall and the park
That skirts thy princely dwelling,
The revellers throng to the minstrel's song,
And the wine in fountain's welling:

And the trumpet's hail to the plume and the mail
Outchants the lovelorn nightingale,

That sits in Cumnor's bower:

For thy place of rest is the eagle's nest
On Kenilworth's high tower.
Then up, up, and away with the cup,
Nor heed the winsome measure,

Thy syren spell, sweet philomel,
Hath drugg'd the draught of pleasure:
Ere thou bewail the warbled tale,
Bid fair good night to the nightingale,
That lures thee to her bower:

There's shame and death in a monarch's breath,
And bane in the fairest flower.'

We regret that we cannot speak with much commendation of All in the Dark; or, Ashamed to own It; a Comedy, in Five Acts, founded on a French Piece called Une Journée à Versailles.' It was presented in 1817 to Covent-Garden Theatre, but returned as not adapted for representation, and we concur in the propriety of the rejection; a circumstance chiefly attributable to Mr. Impey's having lengthened out the main plot, to a degree which weakens its interest, of the little amusing piece which is still performed with considerable success on the Parisian stage.

Some of the miscellaneous poems are very creditable to the taste of Mr. Impey; and we may instance particularly his translation of the first scene of Racine's Athalia, with his Epilogue to " As You Like It," which evinces considerable powers of humor. We insert his paraphrase of Dr. Johnson's Latin Ode on the Isle of Skye, as a favorable specimen of his powers:

Wrapt in the deep recesses of the main,

Lash'd by the storm, and girt with mountains high,
Sweet to the trav'ller is thy verdant plain,

Thy cloud-envelop'd cliffs, romantic Skye!

Sure,

Sure, Peace, if thron'd on earth, must here preside
Here Care, disarm'd, resigns her baffled power:
No strife disquiets life's unruffled tide,

Nor grief insidious lurks in Pleasure's bower.
'Yet what avails the restless mind, to creep
Beneath the covert of sequester'd caves;
Or climb the rocks impending o'er the deep,
And idly count th' incalculable waves ?
Whate'er the pride of stoics may maintain,
Who cheat our reason to exalt its sway,
Man's erring wisdom of itself is vain

The gusts of struggling passion to allay.
'Tis thine, Almighty Ruler! at whose will
With chasten'd rage the floods of ocean roll;
'Tis thine, with intellectual calm to still

The raging of the tempest-troubled soul.'

Art. 18. The Grave of the last Saxon; or, the Legend of the Curfew. A Poem. By the Rev. W. L. Bowles. 8vo. 65. Boards. Hurst and Co. 1822.

Whatever reputation this poetic critic may have acquired in his recent controversy with Lord Byron, that "keen encounter" has been productive of one result which will not, we fear, add very materially to his fame; - it recalled his attention to a poem sketched some years ago, on a subject of national history,' which he has been induced to revise and correct, and now offers to the public. (See the Introduction.) We are compelled to declare that he would have done a great kindness to himself, and to every one whose duty it is to begin at the commencement and read to the conclusion of The Grave of the last Saxon,' if he had not suffered his attention to be diverted from his present pursuits to the labors of former years. The besetting sin of this poem is dullness, an unpardonable fault at the present day; though it contains some elegant passages to throw into the opposite scale. A short epic, like this, has all the disadvantages which are occasioned by blank verse, a stately and monotonous style of expression, and the want of dramatic interest: while it has nothing of the variety of character, pleasing episodes, and ingenious intricacy of plot, which sometimes give an interest to this species of composition that enables the reader to journey through four or five and twenty books. - Mr. Bowles's genius, also, is not very well fitted to shine in blank verse; which, after all, requires more skill and judgment than any other form of poetical composition, to prevent it from tiring the reader. We should have been much more gratified if he had favored the public with a few sonnets, as excellent as those which Mr. Coleridge tells us so strongly excited his youthful admiration.

We shall offer to our readers a short specimen of Mr. B.'s blank verse from the conclusion of the poem, presenting a picture of the Conqueror seated on his throne: H 4

William,