the poems themselves in their form, conception, and execution, it would be Miss Seward's criticisms of them. Indeed it is scarcely possible to believe that such a work as her 'Life of Dr Darwin' could have been written in the present century: -its stilted style, its unnatural verbiage, its pompous solemnity, are so out of keeping with our modern habits of thought, feeling, and expression. Let me read you some passages

"Poetry," says Miss Seward, "has nothing more sublime than this, the picture of a town on fire.

"From dome to dome, when flames infuriate climb,

Sweep the long street, invest the tower sublime,

Gild the tall vanes amid the astonished night,

And reddening heaven returns the sanguine light;

While with vast strides and bristling hair aloof,

Pale Danger glides along the falling roof; And giant Terror howling in amaze, Moves his dark limbs along the lurid blaze. Nymphs! you first taught the gelid wave to rise, Hurled in resplendent arches to the skies;

In iron cells condensed the airy spring, And imp'd the torrent with unfailing wing;

On the fierce flames the stream impetuous falls,

And sudden darkness shrouds the shattered walls;

Steam, smoke, and dust in blended volumes roll,

And night and silence repossess the pole.""

There what do you think of

ing the pole like two tame bears. But let me read you now some passages from Miss Seward's "Analysis of the Botanic Garden." "After that landscape of the scene which forms the exordium, the Goddess of Botany descends in gorgeous gaiety." Belton. "Gorgeous gaiety!" Good heavens !

Mallett. Yes, gorgeous gaiety; and she thus makes her appear

ance

"She comes, the Goddess, through the whispering air,

Bright as the morn descends her blushing car."

"Spring welcomes her with fragrance and with song, and to receive her commission the four elements attend. They ised as gnomes, water-nymphs, and They are allegorsylphs, and nymphs of fire. Her address to each class and the business she allots to them form the four cantos of the first part of the poem. The ladies of Ignition receive her primal attention."

Belton. No! You have invented that.

Mallett. I could not invent anything half so good. Be patient. dress commences is of consummate "The picture with which her adbrilliance and grace. Behold it, reader, and judge if this praise be too glowing!"

"Nymphs of primeval fire! your vestal train,

Hung with gold tresses o'er the vast

abode,

Space without bound-the bosom of their God.""

And listen to this commentary "The word of the Creator setting into instant and universal blaze the ignited particles of Chaos till they burst into countless suns, is an idea sublime in the first degree."

Belton. Sublime indeed! It is more like the fireworks and the girandola of Castel St Angelo than anything I ever read. What would Dr Darwin of to-day say to all this? Here is "evolution" with a vengeance! I think it almost unhandsome, after the first Dr Darwin had so satisfactorily arranged creation in a moment, and astonished Chaos, that his descendant should undertake to "evolve" nature by such tedious processes.

Mallett. Miss Seward continues -"The subsequent comments of the goddess on the powers of the nymphs of fire, introduce pictures of the lightning and the rainbow, the exterior sky, the twilight, the meteor, the aurora borealis-of the planets, the comet, and all the ethereal blaze of the universe."

Belton. Comprehensive. Anything else?

O'er shining oceans ray volcanic light, Or hurl innocuous embers through the night.""

Belton. Why innocuous? Mallett. Have you any objection to "innocuous as a word?

Belton. Does it mean anything?
Mallett. Oh, this is "to consider

too curiously." Why should it mean anything? But let me go on. "The goddess proceeds to remind her handmaids of their employments, says they lead their glittering bands around the sinking day, and, when the sun retreats, confine in the folds of air his lingering fires to the cold bosom of earth.

"O'er eve's pale forms diffuse phosphoric light,

And deck with lambent flames the shrine of night.""

Now mark what Miss Seward says of this. "Surely there cannot be a more beautiful description of a vernal twilight. The phosphorescent quality of the Bolognian stone, Beccari's prismatic shells, and the harp of Memnon, which is recorded to have breathed spontaneous chords when shone upon by the rising sun, are all compared to the glimmerings of the horizon. So, also, the luminous insects, the glow worm, the fire-flies of the tropics, the fabulous ignis fatuus, and the Gymnotus electricus, brought to England from Surinam in South America about the year 1783-a fish whose electric power is a provocation mortal to his enemy. He is compared to the Olympian eagle that bears the lightning in his talons." There ! what do you think of that?

Belton. Give me the book. You have invented, at least, a part of

it, as you are accustomed to do. I am up to your tricks.

Mallett. No; on my word, I have not interpolated a word. See for yourself.

to leave Bardolph and go on with Miss Seward-" we find this beautiful couplet in the course of the passage

"You with nice ear on tiptoe strains pervade

Dim walks of morn or evening's silent shade.'"

bore you?

Belton. Pray go on. Mallett. "The Fourth Canto opens with a sunrise and a rainbow, each of Homeric excellency. The Muse of Botany gazes enchanted on the scene, and swells the song of Paphos" (whatever that may happen to be) "to softer chords. Her poet adds

"Long aisles of oaks returned the silver sound,

And amorous echoes talked along the ground.""

Belton. "Tiptoe strains" is good. Mallett. Good? Miss Seward does not only think it good-she cries

exquisite picture!" I shall now only cite one other passage, and then I will lend you the book to read for yourself. And this shall be the description of a simoom-or rather of Simoom-for of course he is personified:

"Arrest Simoom amid his waste of sand, The poisoned javelin balanced in his hand;

Fierce on blue streams he rides the tainted air,

Points his keen eye and waves his whistling hair;

asm.

After a short digression, Miss Seward continues: "But to resume, the botanic goddess and her enumeration of the interesting employments of the third class of nymphs, their disposal of those bright waters which make Britain irriguous, verdant, and fertile.”

Belton. Irriguous?

Mallett. Yes, irriguous; and I will, as Bardolph says, "maintain the word with my sword to be a good soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding good command, by heaven!" Irriguous, "that is when a country is, as they say, irriguous, or when a country is being whereby a' may be thought to be irriguous, which is an excellent thing." But

boil."

"This," says Miss Seward, "is a fine picture of the Demon of Pestilence. The speed of his approach is marked by the strong current of air in which he passed, and by the term 'whistling' as applied to his hair." There, I have done.

Belton. "Points his keen eye, and waves his whistling hair.' Magnificent! It's all very well to talk about arresting Simoom-with his keen eye pointed and his whistling hair, while billowy deserts are boiling round you; but I distinctly decline to make the attempt. What a subject for a picture! In fact, what a series of pictures could be made from this work!

Mallett. There is one couplet of Paine's-I am sorry that it is the only one I can bring into definite form out of vague mists of my memory-which is worthy of a place with some of these. Such as it is I

Belton. Did you ever read Barlow's Columbiad,' the great epic of the American revolution?

Mallett. All of it? Gott bewahr! I have read a good deal of it, however, in pure amusement, but it has all gone out of my memory. But there is no foolishness which is not to be found in verse, and there is no verse so bad that it does not find readers.

Belton. Do you remember in our young days a fellow who called himself the Lynn bard?

Mallett. Perfectly, and he used to wander along the shores of the Toλvφλοισβοιος θαλασσης, and wildly gesticulate to the winds and the sea, and wave his whistling hair and point his keen eye, and pour forth his feelings in verse. One of his poems, I remember, commenced

thus

"The moon was rising on the sea,
Round as the fruit of orange tree;
I wandered forth to meet my dear,
And found her sitting right down here."

a

Belton. And then there was remarkable Southern poet, over whose verses we used to "laugh consumedly" in our university days. Mallett. "By cock and pie, sir," I remember him well. He was a tremendous Pistol, who never would "aggravate his choler" in verse, though, I daresay he was a quiet peaceable gentleman enough at home and in prose, with a "mellifluous voice," and a "sweet and contagious man, i' faith." A few of his verses still stick in my mind, and I think

Belton. Let us have them. Mallett. They are but few; but let us not measure quality by quan

"He raised the lattice, oped the blind,
He looked around, before, behind,
And when he heard the hinges skreak,
He thought it was his Lena's shriek.
For Lena was divinely fair,
But he had swapped her for despair."

Belton. That is a magnificent idea-swapping your lady-love for despair. And skreak is good toovery good. "Good phrases are surely and ever were very commendable."

Mallett. And yet, after all, laugh as we may over these absurdities, there is something melancholy in the thought of the hours, months, and even years, that were spent over these poems-of the hopes, ambitions, which falsely cheered the authors as they wrote of the amount of talent and toil wasted upon them that was destined never to be rewarded. Even in the midst of our laughter we are almost tempted to weep over these abortive efforts for the immortality of fame. Every jeer of criticism is a deadly stab to hopes that were sweet almost as life-to ambitions which were pure as they were foolish. When this thought comes over one, criticism seems cruel, and our laugh has a Satanic echo.

Belton. Don't get sentimental. Mallett. Do you remember that absurd statue of Moses that stands over the fountain at the entrance of the Piazza de' Termini ?

Belton. Oh yes! that squat, broad, fierce-looking figure swaddled in heavy draperies, and so stunted that it seems to have no legs.

Mallett. The same. Well, there is a story connected with that, sad enough to make one pause before uttering a savage jeer of criticism. The sculptor, whose very name is fortunately buried in oblivion, was young, enthusiastic, ambitious, and self-reliant; and when the commission to make this statue was given to him, he boasted that he would model a Moses that should entirely eclipse that of Michael Angelo. It was a foolish boast, but he was young and ardent, and let us forgive him his boast. Filled with a noble ambition to excel, he shut himself up in his studio, and laboured strenuously and in secret on his work. At last it was finished, and the doors were thrown open to the public. But instead of the full acclaim of Fame which he had expected, he only heard reverberating from all sides cries of derision and scorn, and, driven to desperation and madness by this cruel shattering of all his hopes, he rushed to the Tiber and drowned him

self.

Belton. So much the better, perhaps. We have probably been saved some very bad statues; and we have more than enough of these already.

I

Mallett. Don't sneer at him. Nothing is so easy as to sneer. call this only sad, and all the more sad because the artist really had talent and power. Absurd in many respects as this statue is, it shows vigour and purpose. It does not sin on the side of weakness, but of exaggeration; and time and study would probably have tamed him down to truth and nature. But the blow was too sudden, and he fell beneath it.

Belton. 'Tis as Ulysses says

"No man is the lord of anything, Though in and of him there be much consisting,

Till he communicate his parts to others.

Mallett. And when that arch rewhat wonder that a sensitive mind verberates only the cries of scorn, goes mad?

Belton. I believe that to most authors censure gives more pain The than praise does pleasure. arrow of fault-finding has a poisonous barb that rankles in the wound it makes. One would have thought mis in such matters-that, scorner that Voltaire had a rhinoceros epiderhe would have accepted criticism on and bitter critic as he was himself, his own works at least with calmness; but Madame de Graffigny says of him that he " was altogether indifferent to praise, while the least word from his enemies drove him crazy." Take again, among many Walter Scott. He tells us that he others who might be mentioned, Sir made it a rule never to read an

attack upon himself; and Captain Hall, quoting this statement, adds: "Praise, he says, gives him no pleasure, and censure annoys him.” I have known several distinguished authors in our own day who refused to read any criticisms, favourable or otherwise, of their works; and one who always fled the country when publishing a book.

Mallett. Criticism is not certainly like

"The bat of Indian brakes, Whose pinions fan the wound it makes; And soothing thus the dreamer's pain, It sucks the life-blood from his vein." attacks on his works, or criticism You cannot expect any one to relish and fault-finding, however just. Sir Walter found probably that censure