In a little time, he exclaims in the affectation of phrenzy, • Wake! lovely maid! but she can ne'er awake! For who can burst the fetters of the tomb ?? And again : Ah me! if heavenly charms Or softest melody could soothe the rage Of rueful fate, our Phoebe had not died!' He then goes on to prove, which he does by the most irrefragable arguments, that all men are mortal. (Vol. I. p. 59.) But the following elegiac hymn on an highly interesting subject is quoted by us as the very worst combination of words in the way of poetry existing in the English language. Hymn for the anniversary Meeting of the Glagson Society of the. But, Shall they whese pious parents were Devoted to the Lord, Bow'd at his altar and unseal'd His everlasting word, Strove with his people and subdued Tho' cold and crumbling in the dust, Jehovah! tho' no more on earth His orisons arise; Thou carest for his children, thou Wilt shield them from all ill : They, if they trust in thee will have Vol. I. p. 129. 'Away with melancholy nor doleful changes ring On life and human folly, but merrily, merrily sing fa, la ! And this well-known verse of a justly popular song, introduces very neatly to our notice the professor as a votary of Cupid, chanting hymns and epithalamia with vast effect. He has now doff'd the trappings and the suits of woe,' and shakes his quiver with all possible archness and malice. The ⚫ fruitful river in the eye' is dried up to its very channel, and the windy suspiration of forced breath' is softened down into the sigh of languishment and desire, In an address to a sky-lark, after many pretty little advices, he tells it to seek the bower where Ino lies,' and exclaims, Go! flutter round her heaving breast, Vol. I. p. 22. After telling the lark not to waste his time, we little expected that he was to improve it in the empty task of singing, an occupation neither new nor interesting to an animal who had nothing else to do all the days of the week. It would be no easy task to give a general character of the amorous verses addressed by p ofessor Richardson to his various mistresses, under the names of Ino, Daphne, Lesbia, &c. His own opinion of them, however, is expressed in the following verses of an Anacreontic : ، When I sing the power of love, Qlove! I have no muse but thee ! Vol. I. p. 69. We cannot however quit the professor as a votary of Cupid, without shortly noticing the Epithalamium on the marriages of the duchess of Athol, and of the honourable Mrs. Graham of Belgowan. Whether he was afraid to trust his fancy with such warm images as the celebration of the marriage ceremony naturally excites, or was of opinion that all earthly passions were too sinful to enter the pure bosoms of the above mentioned ladies and their husbands, we shall not stop to conjecture; but true it is that throughout the whole of the said epithalamium, not even the most distant hint of marriage is dropped, nor any feeling described that might lead the reader to imagine that the poet was speaking of living creatures. It resembles a cha ade for the Lady's Magazine, and we think few unmarried females could di ver its solution. After a description of the month of May, which is commonly supposed more fa yourable to intrigue than matrimony, he proceeds thus: * 'Twas then where Doran guides His winding current, in a verdant vale, Lav'd by his wand'ring wave, the rural swains Blushing with orient bloom. The morning dews 'No noisome weed was near them, and no shrub In short, they were two full-blown roses ripe for the matrimonial bouquet, or in other words, two young ladies weary of a single life. The metaphor is carried on to the end of the poem, and certainly produces a very singular effect. We have seen some verses by a friend on an epithalamium something similar to this one, which appear to describe very accurately the nature of the invention. Hark! the rapt bard of love and marriage sings, And shrewd discourses from tongue-gifted flowers, With watery mouth the tantalized sinner Ds the long grace that keeps him from his dinner! We come now to consider our author in the light of a shepherd swain, unacquainted with the noise of cities, and invested with the simple air of rusticity. He performs this part with considerable dexterity, and has contrived to write verses as guiltless of all signification, as the silliest talk of the silliest shepherd that ever waved his kilt to the mountain gales of Caledonia. Mild,' he sung, as orient day, And beauteous as the bloom of May; 'He paus'd: the swains who by him stood. Said archly, we have also seen The goddess dancing on the green!" Vol. I. p. 26. "Tis said, should Virtue leave the skies And visit earth in mortal guise ; Glowing with elegant desire, All that beheld her would admire. For, Ino, she would smile like thee! Professor Richardson, however, sometimes forgets that he is a shepherd, and discovers a degree of learning, classical and otherwise, which would become an academical gown better than a tartan plaid. He converses in the most familiar terms with sylvans, fauns, oreads, dryads, naiads, satyrs, and so forth; and dubs himself minstrel of the Idalian grove,' a title not to be found in the genealogy of Scottish shepherds. We have heard that the peasantry of Scotland are very well informed; but we hope they do not study the amatory Greek and Latin poets. 6 Professor Richardson now pays his addresses to the tra gic queen, who in due time is delivered of two bantlings, the Indians,' and the Maid of Lochlin.' We shall offer a few remarks on the respective merits of each. The scene of the 'Indians' is laid in the wilds of North America,and consequently the greatest number of the Dramatis Personæ are savages. The heroine, Maraino, however, is sprung from British blood, having been carried off when a child from her murdered parents. We find her married to a chief called Onaiyo, who had inspired her with sentiments of a tender nature by his dexterity in massacring and scalping her countrymen. At the opening of the tragedy this savage is from home fighting General Wolfe, and Maraino is induced to believe, by the cunning of one Yerdal a rejected lover, that he has had the misfortune of being killed. In the mean time a prisoner is brought in, tied neck and heels, who is about to furnish the subject matter of a bonfire, when, he providentially turns out to be Maraino's brother. He had, it seems, contrived to escape at the time the rest of his family had suffered; but the mode of his escape is left to the reader's conjectures. Ere long Onaiyo returns perfectly alive in every respect, and after the expression of some little jealousy, embraces this new relation, Sydney, who it seems had saved his life in battle, kills the villain Yerdal, and spreads universal joy over the tribe. Such is the outline of the plot, and, though common-place enough, it is certainly not devoid of interest. Some of the scenes are tolerably well executed, particularly the last of the 4th act, where Sydney is supposed to have killed Onaiyo, and his sister hesitates about sacrificing him to the maues of ber hasband. But on the whole nothing can be worse managed. Every thing is immediately foreseen, whether we will or not; and we are fatigued by tedious narratives of events that we had long ago anticipated. The whole of the first act consists of a conversation between Maraino and her father in law Ononthio, that must have been, both from its dullness and duration, very fatiguing to that worthy old gentleman, and which endangers the perusal of the tragedy by encourag ́ing the influence of sleep. The most gross violation of savage manners every where occurs. In the middle of a battle an amorous and bold savage is represented giving away to an enemy who had felled him to the earth, the wampum belt that his wife had woven and bestowed as an eternal memorial of her love. This belt is afterwards made use of to prove the existence of its former wearer, a poor and unnatural device. Ononthio, an old warrior, is violent in his curses against human sacrifices, though he must have presided at them from his youth, and does not appear to have conversed with the missionaries. Onaiyo, on discovering his wife hanging on the breast of a stranger, walks quietly away to inquire of a friend the meaning of the phoenomenon. A savage would instantly have stabbed him. Indeed, the North Americans are represented as a nation of philosophers. They all speak according to the rules of Quinctilian for the formation of orators, and they deliver harangues, that in point of style would not yield to a maiden speech in the British senate. This seems not altogether so natural as might have been. The Maid of Lechlin,' which our author chuses to call a lyrical drama, is founded upon a story in Fingal, a poem attributed to Ossian. It was read at one of the meetings of the literary society in Glasgow college, and we suppose Professor Richardson availed himself of the many excellent critical remarks suggested by the collected wisdom of that very learned body of men. The public have therefore a right to expect the Maid of Lochlin to be a perfect beauty. The story is shortly thus: Fingal king of stormy Morven, pays a friendly visit to Starno king of Denanark, gains the love of his daughter Agandeeca, and the |