O! sabbath bell, thy voice Makes hearts like these rejoice; Not so the child of vanity and power; He the blest pavement treads Perchance as custom bids, Perchance to gaze away a listless hour: Then crowns the bowl, or scours along the road, Nor hides his shame from men, nor heeds the eye of God! Oh! would thy influence bless With faith and holiness, The laggart people of our favour'd isle! But if too deep and wide Have spread corruption's tide, O, might he deign on me and mine to smile!' &c. P. 57. We do not much admire the sentiment contained in this last stanza. The wish to be saved amid the ruin which he fears is to fall on the rest of the inhabitants of Great Britain, discovers too great attention to personal comfort; and though we wish Mr. Mant all the happiness he deserves both in this and the next world, we trust that a few others will be saved from perdition besides himself and Mrs. Mant, and their child, a little lady who has been introduced into the world by her fond and indulgent papa, before she has Jearned to articulate. The Sunday Morning is appropriately followed by the Prayer, a little composition as remarkable for the excess of piety as the deficiency in poetry. It con'tains a variety of injunctions, delivered in the form of argument, never to forget our duty to our Creator; the effect of which we cannot help thinking would have been increased by the use of regular prose, instead of that kind which borrows the assistance of rhyme. 'Abroad, at home; in weal or woe; U The Winter Scene written on Christmas-day,' contains the following stanza. 'When sighing to the gale, the wood His wither'd honours yields; And dark is now the mountain-flood With storms deform'd and foul with mud, The two first lines allude to a phenomenon that we never witnessed in any part of England, namely, the woods shedding their leaves on Christmas-day, an operation which Mr. Mant may have lately had occasion to observe is concluded before that inclement season. This inaccuracy (which in a lover of nature could only have proceeded from the blindness of love), and the dull account of the muddy floods, is scarcely redeemed by the innocent and tame familiarity of the ensuing interrogation: For who that has an eye to view, And who that has a breast To feel the charms that round him glow In summer splendour drest, O'er all the scene a glance can dart, And see without a sigh Not all the scene can now impart, A charm to glad his drooping heart` We come now to part second of this volume, decorated by the inscription, Pindarum quisquis studet æmulari.' What motives directed Mr. Mant in the choice of this motto, it would be equally presumptuous, and vain to conjecture, since this portion of his poetry chiefly relates to gentlemen of his acquaintance, at Oriel college or elsewhere, none of whose names seem naturally to suggest the idea of that lofty bard. After several ineffectual efforts to discover any similitude between Mr. Mant and the bee of Chamouny, (page 67,) we caught sight of the Rev. Edward Coppleston's name, a gentleman of acknowledged talents and learning. has been so unfortunate as to have an epistle addressed to him by this universal and complete letter-writer, containing some fulsome compliments which his sense and feeling must despise, and expressed in quaint and sickly lan He He is guage, which his taste and genius must condemn. informed that Oxford with eager voice pursues his bright career.' Mr. Coppleston himself and all his real friends know that this compliment has no meaning: a man cannot display his abilities in a few Latin lectures on ancient poetry, delivered to a few striplings, who do not understand one half of what he says, or in an oration delivered once in two years in the theatre. Yet this constitutes the whole of Mr. Coppleston's bright career,' since of his private virtues, and the character he bears among his friends, which we know to be deservedly high, the public are unable to form any judgment. We must remark however, that this gentleman should have been cautious how he injured the taste of the young men at Oxford, by lending the sanction of his name to such despicable trumpery as the poetry of Mr. Mant. We intended to have exposed at full length, the nume rous faults of style, sentiment, thought and description, that swarm over the surface of this second part of our author's labours, but such conduct could only exhibit misapplied industry and perseverance. We shall therefore speedily dismiss the first volume, but not without taking notice of what strikes us to be a very glaring impropriety in Mt. Mant's behaviour as a married clergyman. He never ceases for one moment to celebrate the mental and corporeal charms of his wife. On whatever subject he may happen to write, Mrs. Mant is the burden of the song, and not unfrequently, the husband, wife, and child join in full chorus. Now we have not the slightest objections to believe, that Mrs. Mant, like many thousand young ladies who figure in the newspapers, is adorned with every accomplishment calculated to render the nuptial state truly felicitous," but what living being on the face of the habitable globe, can feel any interest in so very ordinary an occurrence? Lovesongs addressed to young ladies before marriage, are sufficiently disgusting to the public; but what shall be said of the nauseous strain which an uxorious and doating husband pours forth to the mother of his children? The darts of Cupid should no longer be aimed at a worthy matron who has approached the altar of Hymen; and surely Venus is less concerned in the poetry of a married man, than Lucina. We have always been accustomed to believe that the finet feelings of the heart love to be indulged in the quiet retirement of domestic happiness, and that they shrink from publicity as contrary to their spirit, and destructive of their existence. But we have been mistaken; for Mr. Mant cannot be happy unless all the world know that he is so; and the charms of his spouse can shed no soft lustre to gild the vale of Truriton, unless they sometimes pour their meri diau effulgence over the towers of Oxford, and, transfused'" into verse through 120 pages of printed paper, delight the aimless loungers in Mr. Parker's very excellent library. We wish not to hurt the feelings of any man of true delicacy, but there can be no rudeness in thus publicly mentioning a lady's name, that has already been blazoned abroad by her own husband. Before leaving the first volume, we direct the attention of our readers to several patriotic songs, written with less land guor than newspaper-poetry in general, under which character we believe they first made their appearance. That on Lord Nelson is the best, and had it been confined to manuscript, would probably have gained its author great praise among his private friends. It is however il calculated for public perusal as the thoughts are very trite, and the language not vigorous. It is what ladies would call a pretty thing. The appendix now solicits our attention. It contains rather a long poem on the horrors of the slave trade, a subject somewhat threadbare, as there is probably not one human being of the age of puberty in the united kingdoms, who has not taken occasion to deliver his sentiments upon it. In venturing to discuss the merits of this most unrighteous traffic, Mr. Mant has therefore displayed more courage than prudence, and trusted that his powerful imagination would exhibit in more glaring colours the enor mous guilt of a system that has branded with infamy the European name, and at the bare mention of which the thinking heart shudders with horror. Sorry are we to say that in the Slave,' Mr. Mant is even more shy of ideas than usual, and that the only effect produced by his composition, is a transference of part of that pity to the poet which was forinerly the undivided property of the fettered negro. His ejaculations, interrogations, exclamations, and interjections, are often calculated to awaken a smile on the cheek of sorrow, and we cease to reflect on the miseries of the wretched African, from a desire to conjecture at what school Mr. Mant received the rudiments of his education heard even from the most sorry declaimer in the House of Commons a more frigid appeal to the feelings than the following paragraph; and really Mr. Mant, when he speaks so, ought to be coughed down. If there be aught on this terrestrial sphere We never } With shame and grief the swelling heart inspire, - After an address to the spirit of Afric, and several just compliments to Mr. Wilberforce, we meet with the following string of questions, which is said in a note to be imitated from Pope, but which, in our opinion, resembles more closely a passage in the poetry of the Anti-jacobin. Ah! what avail'd the spark of heavenly flame, The lines we allude to in the Anti-jacobin begin thus: Ah! hapless porker! what can now avail Mr. Mant entertains a very high opinion of the physical, moral, and intellectual powers of the inhabitants of Africa, which he expresses in this way he is describing the negro. "Fierce as th' Atlantic wave when tempests sweep, Or placid as the slumber of the deep: Or like the mighty elephant that reigns Mildest of beasts in wide Kaarta's plains !' He then describes with a minute accuracy, which would have been laudable in a witness before the select committee of the House of Commons, the various arts which the slavemerchants employ to kidnap the poor negroes. Before them horror, and despair behind, Speed to their task the stealers of mankind! The uncomfortable situation of the slaves during the mid |