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If a secret disquietude should sometimes agitate our breast at what we are pleased to term lighter and more venial transgressions, we are unwilling to allow this to be the voice of conscience, since we persuade ourselves that it is not allowed to be so in a similar instance, by the rest of mankind. The robber or the murderer, indeed, we can admit to be obnoxious to its severest rebukes. But is it to these, is it indeed to any, whatever be the nature or the measure of their offences, that we confine its nature and its office?

"Disguise it, or misname it as they will, it is no stranger to the breasts of the more decent and circumspect part of mankind: nay, it is familiar with those, who wish to be considered, and are, justly perhaps according to our ideas, considered more amiable and attractive. It is familiar with those whose youth, whose talents, whose harmless gaiety, and comparative freedom from vice, extort our applause, and win our affections. To these conscience gives many a just rebuke, for offences both of omission and commission, for neglect of duties towards God and towards man. Happy for them were it, did they not misprize and misconstrue these rebukes, like the imprudent traveller, who sees not in the distant and harmless coruscations of the lightning that fierce and terrible stroke which is destined to pierce him. Happy for them, would they persuade themselves, or would they be persuaded by others, to cherish, and not to estrange from them, those livelier perceptions, those more animated feelings of vice and virtue, which arise in young and unadulterated minds--would they remember their Creator, and cultivate an acquaintance with his just and wise laws, in the days of their youth, when the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when they shall say, "I have no pleasure in them.'" P. 60.

POETRY.

ART. XI. The Bower of Bliss; with other Amatory Poems; including the Loves of Abelard and Heloisa. 8vo. pp. 258. Wilson. 1814.

At the present period amatory writers are almost as numerous as insects in a season of blight, and many of them are, beyond all comparison, more prejudicial to society. Insignificant indeed is the physical blight which destroys our fruit and our corn, compared with that moral blight which undermines and withers the virtues and honourable feelings. The great aim of these versifiers on love, or, more correctly speaking, on lust, seems to be to excite a contempt of duties, to stimulate the passions, and to strip the communion of the sexes of all that can ennoble it. Their doctrines, in short, directly tend to make all men rogues, and all women prostitutes. Here is an offender of this class, Ff who,

VOL. III. APRil, 1815.

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who, apparently with this laudable purpose, has published a
handsome wire-woven, hot-pressed octavo.
His taste is exe-
crably bad, and his morals are still more so.
As the latter part
of our charge is of a serious nature, we will substantiate it by
proof. The leading poem in the book is "The Bower of Bliss,
or the Loves of Alonzo and Angioline." Had it no other fault
than being wholly composed of " filmy, gauzy, gossamery lines,”
we should not notice it; but it has a far worse fault. The hero,
Mr. Alonzo, is a

"Sad youth, whom woe had press'd
With madness to her aching breast,
Was known, and slighted, far and near,
And still to many a heart was dear,

Who knew him in his happier day

This sad youth, who is at once slighted and dear, has been deprived of his Angioline; and, accordingly, as in duty bound, has become as mad as a March hare, and now roams

"With the bedlam, pale Despair,

Whose haggard eye, and streaming hair,

And incoherent gait,
Strike terror wheresoe'er she go,
Making each willing friend her foe,
And turning love to hate."

All this is told in language well worthy of the subject, and which might easily be believed to be a faithful transcript from some whitened wall, scrawled with desperate charcoal. It affords, however, a fine opportunity for an attack on flintyhearted fathers, who do not like to let their children run away with the first man that makes the proposal. Somehow or other, Angioline gets back, from her " tyrant" in Norway, and immediately, with her “ soft guitar” in her hand, begins to search for her insane adorer.

"On roam'd the MAID, (?) and as she went
Breath'd forth her soul in languishment."

"

While she is in this dangerously languishing state, she fortu nately pops upon the object of her wishes, who, with a "bleachen face," is sleeping in a dark and ivy-circled grot," upon couch of straw," lighted by a something, the author does not say whether a candle or a lamp, on a "marble tablet." She wakes him, he recovers his wits, and a scene takes place, over which delicacy commands us to draw the curtain. The moral, we showld say anti-moral, is printed in italicks, and is, that

"Freedom is the soul of love."

That

That no doubt may remain, as to his principles, the author, in another place, speaks out plainly. Addressing a Miss Eliza, (for he pretends to have as many misses as Jupiter of old,) he exclaims, with a rapture which proves as fatal to rhyme and to common sense as to decency :

"Some frigid nymph may say we err,
(Sweet error!) and our taste reprove,
But nature, dear! would still prefer
To all that wealth and fame confer,
One thrill of pure illicit love."

After this, he can excite no wonder, when he talks of " rigid moralists, who hate the softer pleasures of life, only because they are past the enjoyment of them," and declares that he "shall never cease to regard Heloisa as an amiable and exemplary portrait of innocence!"

In his epistle from Heloisa to Abelard, it must, nevertheless, be owned, that no gross violation of propriety is to be found. The merit, however, of this attention to decorum, does not, we fear, belong to himself. He tells us honestly, that," at the solicitation of those whom he considered competent to judge of his production, many striking passages have been withheld." What was the tenor of these "striking passages" may easily be. imagined. Some parts of this poem are not bad: but we cannot without a smile observe the sort of rivalship into which the author enters with Pope, whom he familiarly terms his " predecessor." His language reminds us of "how we apples swim!" Nor can we feel other than contempt for the judgment of a person who prates about "the tenderness, and feminine character, of the writings of Pope."

Of his amatory compositions, the best are certainly this Epistle, Philander to Leanthe, and a translation of Metastasio's La Libertà; in the last of which he has, in a few instances, mistaken the sense of the original.

In his miscellaneous poems there is a profusion of tawdry ornament, and a plentiful lack of ideas. It is laughable enough to see such a writer gravely observe, that "it is astonishing to remark the redundance of fine phraseology adopted by the minor poets of the day."

Sometimes this gentleman works himself into a phrenzy, and he then pours forth such rhapsodies as madness itself never uttered at the full of the moon. Witness the following lines, from a thing ycleped "The Enthusiast, a Soliloquy." We tried to find a meaning in them, but did not succeed; we doubt if our readers will have better luck with them.

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"Fix'd on the whirlwind's dizzy height,
List! Milton spreads the mandate far,
While Shakespeare, doubtful of the fight,
Drives thro' the clouds his flaming car;
And, as he goes, with thund'ring voice
Collects his trusty warriors round;
Who, flush'd with victory, rejoice,

Swift rushing through the gloom profound:
Rapt at the scene, the adverse chief pursues,
And now the fight at ev'ry point ensues.
"With opake shield of horrid gleam,
And lance of pestilential pow'r,
Milton, hurrying down the stream,
Views the star of Fortune low'r;
For wrapp'd in robes of hue sublime,
Bright Ariel wields the potent spear!
Throughout the hollow vaults of time,
His voice, like music to the ear,

Calls forth the slumb ring myriads to the plain,

Where corses smoke, and slaughter'd souls complain.”

To our ears, this sounds exceedingly like those admirable specimens which Persius has given of Nero's verses; with this exception in favour of the tyrant, that something like meaning may be discovered in his verses.

In one instance the author endeavours to be satirical, and he accomplishes his purpose so far as to produce a bitter satire on himself. In a note to his Satire, he praises Campbell, and bespatters Walter Scott. The works of the latter he is pleased to denominate "non-entities." What will this would-be satirist and critical wiseacre say, when we tell him, and tell him with a knowledge of the fact, that Campbell, who merits all the praise he can receive, regards Walter Scott as the first of modern British poets?

In conclusion, we submit to the friends of this gentleman the propriety, we might say the necessity, of rigorously restraining him from the use of pen, ink, and paper, for at least a twelvemonth to come; so that he may, at all events, cease to write, and, if possible, learn to think. This volume is uot, unless we are much mistaken, his first offence in print: we shall feel repaid for our labour, if any thing we have said should contribute to make it his last.

ART. XII. Paddy Hew; a Poem, from the brain of Timothy Tarpaulin. Whistled by a Sea Lark. Small Svo. 217 pp. Whittingham and Arliss.

A sea lark, as this volume has thoroughly convinced us, has not the slightest resemblance to that kind of lark which "at

Heaven's

Heaven's gate sings. We are led to conclude that it rather bears a likeness to that species which is denominated a mud lark; and we are quite sure that its note is more calculated for the lower regions than for the upper. If our readers should ask us what is the purport of this mud-we beg pardon, this sealark's whistlings, we must reply that we cannot inform them. The book contains four or five thousand handsomely printed lines, about Paddy Hew, and Ironside, and Shinossy, and Sally Wattle; but further we cannot say. It must be classed under the head of "incomprehensible." We suspect, indeed, that the writer means to be satirical, but we can very seldom discover the object of his satire; we almost imagine that he intends to be witty, but we have not been fortunate enough to find any thing that merits the name of wit; and we believe that he considers his production as being in rhyme, after the manner of Butler, though, from the frequent glaring dissimilarity of sound in the terminations of his lines, we have often been tempted to enter. tain an idea that he has been labouring to invent a sort of hudibrastic blank verse. One piece of wit, which as, with little variation, he uses it three times, the author probably deems a choice one, we will quote. It is-" I'm off again, my name is Walker."

As a specimen of his poetry, we will give his motto, which is really a favourable specimen, inasmuch as it contains fewer faults than any equal number of lines in the poem itself. Whether, however, its beauty will attract many purchasers, may reasonably be doubted. It has one merit-that of containing some truth.

"I'll try the temper of the times
By manufacturing of rhymes,
Such as never were submitted,
To critical animadversion,
Or ignorant aspersion,

To be cut up perhaps, and spitted
By daggers, tomahawks, and skewers,

Of knowing codgers-call'd reviewers."

If, nevertheless, in spite of the caution which we have given them, any persons resolve to peruse this half-guinea book, we shall be greatly astonished if they should not speedily be disposed to answer with a surly negative the author's question of-"I rhyme so quick, so free and easy,

Pray gentle reader do I please ye?"

and to exclaim, when they come to the last two lines, (should their curiosity and patience carry them so far,)

"The gentle reader will not grieve
If here Tarpaulin takes his leave."

ART.

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