lucent as they glance over some classic stream? What can vie with that alabaster skin but marble temples, dedicated to the Queen of Love? What can match those golden freckles but glittering sun-sets behind Mount Olympus? Here, in one corner of the room, stands the Hill of the Muses, and there is a group of Graces under it! There played the NINE on immortal lyres, and here sit the critical but admiring Scottish fair, with the catalogue in their hands, reading the quotations from Lord Byron's verses with liquid eyes, and lovely vermilion lips-would that they spoke English, or any thing but Scotch!-Poor is this irony! Vain the attempt to reconcile Scottish figures with Attic scenery! What land can rival Greece? What earthly flowers can compare with the colours in the sky? What living beauty can recall the dead? For in that word, GREECE, there breathe three thousand years of fame that has no date to come! Over that land hovers a light, brighter than that of suns, softer than that which vernal skies shed on halcyon seas, the light that rises from the tomb of virtue, genius, liberty! Oh! thou Uranian Venus, thou that never art, but wast and art to be; thou that the eye sees not, but that livest for ever in the heart; thou whom men believe and know to be, for thou dwellest in the desires and longings, and hunger of the mind; thou that art a Goddess, and we thy worshippers, say dost thou not smile for ever on this land of Greece, and shed thy purple light over it, and blend thy choicest blandishments with its magic name? But here (in the Calton Convening room, in Waterloo Place, close under the Melville monument-strange contradiction!) another Greece grows on the walls-other skies are to be seen, ancient temples rise, and modern Grecian ladies walk. Here towers Mount Olympus, where Gods once sat-that is the top of a hill in Arcadia (who would think that the eyes would ever behold a form so visionary, that they would ever see an image of that, which seems only a delicious vanished sound?) this is Corinth--that is the Parthenon-there stands Thebes in Boeotia-that is the Plain of Platea,-yonder is the city of Syracuse, and the Temple of Mi This is Pope's description of them in the Odyssey, which (we must say) is very bad, and if Mr. Williams had not given us a more distinct idea of the places he professes to describe, we should not have gone out of our way to notice them. As works of art, these water-colour drawings deserve very high praise. The drawing is correct and characteristic: the colouring chaste, rich, and peculiar ; the finishing generally careful; and the selection of points of view striking and picturesque. We have at once an impressive and satisfactory idea of the country of which we have heard so much; and wish to visit places which, it seems from this representation of them, would not hely all that we have heard. Some splenetic travellers have pretended that Attica was dry, flat, and barren. But it is not so in Mr. Williams's authentic draughts; and we thank him for restoring to us our old, and, as it appears, true illusion--for crowning that Elysium of our schoolboy fancies with majestie hills, and scooping it into lovely winding valleys once more. Lord Byron is, we believe, among those who have spoken il! of Greece, calling it a "sand-bank," or something of that sort. Every ill-natured traveller ought to hold a pencil as well as a pen in his hand, and be forced to produce a sketch of his own lie. As to the subjects of Mr. Williams's pencil, nothing can exceed the local interest that belongs to them, and which he has done nothing, either through injudicious selection, or negligent execution, to diminish. Quere. Is not this interest as great in London as it is in Edinburgh? In other words, we mean to ask, whether this exhibition would not answer well in London? W. H. N. B. There are a number of other very interesting sketches interspersed, and some very pleasing home views, which seem to show that nature is every where herself. MR. MARTIN'S PICTURES AND THE BONASSUS. Tom Hood A Letter from Mrs. Winifred Lloyd, to her Friend Mrs. Price, at the Parsonage MY DEAR MRS. PRICE,-This is to let you know that me and Becky and little Humphry are safe arrived in London where we have been since Monday. My darter is quite inchanted with the metropalus and longs to be intraduced to its satiety which please God she shall be as soon as things are ready to make her debutt in. It is high time now she should be brought into the world being twenty years old cum Midsummer and very big for her size. You knows, Mrs. Price, that with her figure and accumplishments she was quite berried in Wales but I hopes when the country is scowered off she will shine as bright as the best, and make a rare havoc among the mail sex. She has larned the pinaforte and to draw, and does flowers and shells, as Mr. Owen says, to a mirikle, for I spares no munny on her to make her fit for any gentleman's wife, when he shall please to ax her. I took her the other day to the Bullock's museum to see Mr. Martin's expedition of picters because she has such a pretty notion of painting herself, and a very nice site it was, thof it cost half a crown. get the children in for half-price but the man said that Becky was a fullgrown lady and so she is sure enuff, so I could only beat him down to take a sixpence off little Humphry. in Monmouthshire. at their backs-Becky thought it The picters are hung in a parler up stairs (Becky calls it a drawing room) and you see about a dozen for your munny, which brings it to about a penny a piece and that is not dear. The first on the left hand as you go in and on the right coming out is called Revenge. It reperesents a man and woman with a fire breaking out * The storming of Babylon : Mrs. Lloyd must have got her Catalogue by hearsay. 428 a pin's difference betwixt them-and There is another picter of a burning mounting with Zadok† hanging upon a rock-Becky knows the story and shall tell it you-but it looked nothing after the other, though the criketal gentlemen you knows of, said it was a much better painting. But there is no saying for people's tastes as Mr. Owen says, the world does not dine upon one dinner-but I and that is have forgot one more Mac Beth and the three Whiches, with such a rigiment of Hilanders that I wonder how they got into one picter. Becky says the band ought to be playing bag Pipes instead of kittle drums, but no doubt Mr. Martin knows better than Becky, and I am sure from what I have heard in the North that either kittles or drums would sound better than bag Pipes. We are going tomorrow to the play and any other sites we may see Your faithful humble sarvant P. S. I forgot to say that after we had seen Mr. Martins expedition, we went from the Bullock's to the Bonassus, as it is but a step from wan to the other. The man says it is a perfect picter, and so it is, for sartain, and ought to be painted. It is like a bull, only quite different, and cums from the Appellation Mountings. My Humphry thought it must have been catcht in a pound and I wundered the child could make sich a nateral idear, but he is a sweet boy, and very foreward in his larning. He was eyely delited at the site you may be sure but Becky being timorsome shut her eyes all the time she was seeing it. But saving his pushing now and then, the anymil is no ways veracious and eats nothing but vegeatables. The man showed us some outlandish sort of pees that it lives upon but he give it two hole pales of rare carrots besides. must be a handsum customer to the green Grocer and a pretty penny I warrant it costs for vittles. But look it is a wonderfull work of natur, and ought to make Mr. Lloyd says. to his ways as Which of our infiddles could make a Bonassus, let them tell me that Mrs. Price! I would have carried him home in my eye to describe to you & Mr. Price, but we met Mrs. Striker the butcher's lady and she drove him quite out of my head. Howsomever as you likes curosities, I shall send his playbill that knows more about him than I do, though there's nothing like seeing him with I think if the man wan's own eyes. would take him down to Monmouth in a carryvan he would get a good many hapence by showing him. Till then I remane once more man It Your faithful humble sarvant * Mrs. Lloyd means Sadak, in the Tales of the Genii. THE FIRST CANTO OF RICCIARDETTO: RICCIARDETTO is an amusing burlesque of the chivalrous poetical romance. It bears, probably, much the same relation to the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, as Sir Launcelot Greaves does to Don Quixote. Forteguerri (called also by the affected Greek parody of Carteromaco) reversed the experiment of Gay,-who stumbled on genuine pastorals, while aiming at comic travesties,-and found himself betrayed into parody, while professedly exemplifying the facility of the romantic epopea. He received from nature an invincible disposition to pleasantry; of which his unsparing abuse of priests, while himself secretary to the Propaganda, is a standing proof. The ambition of coping with the serious poets, which acted as the original impulse to the creation of this poem, occasionally breaks out in sallies of poetic fancy, such as we meet with in the better parts of Lord Byron's Juan; the hint of which (to say no more) was clearly taken from Ricciardetto.There are some very pretty tales, which, if they have not all the poetical sentiment of Ariosto, are very similar to those of Boyardo, in the Inamorato. The introductions, or openings, to the cantos, are evident imitations of Berni's Refacciamento of Ariosto; and not unlike the style of the Malmantile of Lippi. There are, however, in Forteguerri, more boldness and less delicacy. He says all that he means to say. Berni al ways leads us to suspect that he means more than he says, and sometimes the contrary to what the words imply. Forteguerri descends frequently into broad farce, and not seldom into the extreme of vulgarity: there is little of that genteel, refined wit, so conspicuous in Berni. In Ricciardetto we meet with the cha racters of Ariosto and Boyardo not always placed in the most honourable situations. Forteguerri turns them occasionally into cooks and stable-boys, and gives them many a drubbing from vulgar hands. But the hero of his burlesque is poor Ferrau; whom he takes a peculiar pleasure in persecuting. He certainly keeps up this character throughout with great spirit. The meeting in the cell between Rinaldo and Ferrau turned hermit, in the second canto, hears so minute a resemblance to that of Richard Lion-heart and Friar Tuck in Ivanhoe, as to preclude the idea of mere coincidence. The readers of the novel will at once perceive this, from an extract which we shall give in the version of Mr. Merivale, cant. 2, stanzas 23 and 199: "But tell me," said the knight, half choaked with laughter "What cause has worked this wonderful conversion? What game was up ?—what mischief were you after immersion? When you sustain'd this sudden soul's And last, what makes you exercise your craft here, Mid wilds untrod by Jew, Moor, Turk, or Persian ?" "The tale is long," return'd the whitewash'd sinner; "If so," rejoin'd the knight, "let's first have dinner." Ferrau replied, “dark is my chimney nook No wasting there, no baking, boiling, I save myself the charges of a cook, stewing; And pay with present fasting past misdoing; But, if for once, Rinaldo, you can brook To taste the frugal life I'm now pursuing, You'll find dried figs and raisins in yon coffer My winter-hoard,-I've nothing else to offer." Rejoin'd the knight, "sith 'twill no better be, Whate'er you can bestow I'll freely eat; Hunger devours stone walls-'tis so with me " And therewith at the table took his seat: The holy friar said "Benedicite: " Rinaldo never stayed to carve his meat, But bolted it; nor did he once give o'er Till he'd demolish'd all the winter store." * Murray, 1822. Perhaps the humour of the scene is not improved by the novelist (except in the article of the dried pease, and the grimace with which they are swallowed), but the repast undoubttedly is since Friar Tuck, at length feeling his bowels relent, and his hypocrisy give way, produces, before the enlarging eyes of his guest, a miraculous supply of red-deer pasty. As the two translators present themselves in unavoidable juxta-position, we shall say a few words of the one just quoted, who preceded the subject of our article, in a version of the two first cantos. The rival translations bear but little resemblance to each other. Lord Glenbervie's is (we whisper it in confidence) a little heavy. His predecessor is impertinently flippant; fond of quaint rhymes, which do not appear to arise out of the natural diction, but are strained and laboured to set off the skill of the translator in this kind of knick-knackery. This is not the case with Lord Byron's imitation of the ottava rima in his poem of Beppo, nor in Mr. Frere's Whistlecraft; which latter it seems to have been the aim of Mr. Merivale to imitate or rival; sed longo intervallo. We take, at random, a few specimens of complete failures in this way; to say nothing of the unwarrantable liberties taken with the author, and the vile taste of foisting English allusions into the poem. Such only as confirm'd them that the prince lay Somewhere or other hid in the Penins'la. And when he woke, all other things forgotten, "Up, up," he cried," and seek the Count, 'od rot'en." Astolpho staring broad, like one just waking, Cried, "damn her! what's our hostess to the county?" The merit of the translator in these elegant facetia, is entirely his own. It must, however, be acknowledged, that this is erring on the right side. Where it is a question of the mock-heroic or comic romance, flippancy may offend, but prosiness is intolerable. We know nothing in the annals of heavy facetiousness so remarkable as the following stanza of his lordship (and it is a tolerably fair specimen of the general manner of execution); unless it be the incident of the German, who broke his shins in jumping over the chairs of his apartment, by way of serving an apprenticeship to gaiety. The poor inamorato, thus forsaken, Retired not till compell'd by his com |