Russian Anthology; or, Specimens of the Russian Poets. Translated by John Bowring, F.L.S. London. 12mo. pp. 239. 7s.

This is, indeed, a curiosity, and we cordially invite the lovers of what is rare and elegant to its inspection. We have fruits and flowers imported from the Frozen Regions of the North, which we have been hitherto taught to believe bloomed and ripened only under southern suns, equal in flavour, nor inferior in hue and fragrance to the productions of the Tropics. But to speak without a metaphor, the little volume before us deserves the particular consideration of all, to whom intellectual development is an object of interest-of every one, who has the magnanimity, in a selfish age and generation, to encourage the efforts of genius, struggling for emancipation from the thraldom in which ignorance and vassalage would confine it. We hail this specimen of Russian literature as the pledge and promise of a speedy liberation from her long intellectual bondage; as the day spring, visiting the protracted night of her mental darkness and moral degradation.

To Mr. Bowring we are indebted for an agreeable introduction to the general literature of Russia, and for a particular acquaintance with her poets. -How gracefully and how well he has performed his part, it remains for us to shew.

The poets, with whose writings it has been Mr. Bowring's attempt to familiarize us, are thirteen, of various degrees of merit and interest. Of the extreme difficulty of doing justice to the subject, every one, conversant with the Sclavonic or modern Russ, must be sensible: there are many words, the meaning of which can only be partially given by lengthened compounds and circumlocutory phrases. We are thoroughly disposed to concede, as much as seems to be demanded of the perfect

translator, in the following passage from Mr. Bowring's well-written introductory observations:

"No one can be more alive than I am, to the extreme difficulty of communicating to a foreign version the peculiar characters of the original.The grace, the harmony, the happy arrangement, the striking adaptation of words to ideas; every thing in fact, except the primary and naked thought, requires, for its perfect communication, a genius equal to its first conception."

Pope has asserted, that critics as well as poets, must be born such; and Mr. Bowring, very properly, puts in a similar claim for translators also.

Fully aware of the difficulties the translator has to encounter, we do not hesitate to say, that, so far as we have had opportunities of comparing the poems now rendered with the originals, Mr. Bowring has not only performed his task with fidelity, the first duty of a translator, but with an ease and elegance, which exhibit a mind largely gifted with the poetical temperament, and a genius closely allied to the fine spirits, whose language and sentiments he has clothed in the most harmonious English versification. We may be here permitted, by way of digres sion, to state a fact, which cannot be generally known, but which deserves to be widely circulated. A venerable minister of the Church of Iceland cultivated his native poetry with success, and enriched it with a translation of our divine Epic-The Paradise Lost. He presented bis MS. to the library of the Literary Fund. This version is stated, on competent authority, to be executed with uncommon spirit, and, in many instances, to rival the original. We have been tempted to the communication of intelligence so interesting, from a conviction that it will prove acceptable to such of our readers as have been accustomed to associate

sterility of poetical intellect with frigidity of climate.

But to proceed to the work before

us.

The first poet, in order as in talent, is Derzhavin.-His compositions breathe a sublime spirit. His Ode on God is singularly impressive. It is a compressed selection and beautiful arrangement of the established but sublime conceptions of the Deity. It is stated to have been rendered into Japanese by order of the Emperor, and to have been hung up, embroidered with gold, in the temple of Jeddo; it has also been translated into the Chinese and Tartar languages. The last paragraph, beginning with "Creator, yes," is remarkably impressive..

From Derzhavin's Poem of the Waterfall we extract the following beautiful passage:

"Thon parent of the Waterfall! proud

river!

To Derzhavin succeeds Batiushkov, and his very interesting Poem, "To My Penates," has been as touchingly rendered by the translator, and reminds us of L'Allegro of Milton.

From the father of Russian poetry, Somonosov, we have a short poem as original as profound. But we must waive this formal ceremony of particu lar introduction, and bring before our readers"Karamsin," of whose genius we have here some fine specimens. He has been styled, the Nightingale of Poetry, and it is meet that we should be indulged with a strain. We have selected a little plaintive poem, not so much for its superiority to the others, as from its convenient adaptation to our limits.

LILEA.

"What a lovely flower I see
Bloom in snowy beauty there!
O how fragrant-and how fair!
Can that lily bloom for me?
Thee to pluck be mine the bliss;
Place upon my breast and kiss!
Why, then, is that bliss denied?
Why does heaven our fates divide?
Sorrow now my bosom fills;
Tears run down my cheeks as rills:
Far away that flower must bloom,
And in vain I sigh "O come!"
Softly zephyr glides between
Waving boughs of emerald green.
Purest flowrets bend their head;
Shake their little cups of dew:
Fate unpitying and untrue,

Fate so desolate and dread,
Says, "She blossoms not for thee-
In vain thou sheddest the bitter tear;
Another hand shall gather her:-
And thou-go mourn thy misery!"
O flower so lovely! Lilea fair!
With thee I fain my fate would share,
But heaven has said, "It cannot be.
Page 114.

Of the national songs, that in page 201 is remarkably happy, but we can no further indulge in extracts from this interesting volume.

In recalling the memory of our readers to the fact, that this volume is a representative of the unformed and infant literature of Russia, we may confidently ask, if, even through the imperfect medium in which our short Review has exhibited these ta

lents, they have, for one moment, found such apology necessary-or, whether they have felt disposed to qualify their praise, by any reference to the immaturity we have noticed. If this be the infancy of Literature, a gigantic manhood is indeed to be anticipated.

We should not do justice to our own feelings, did we not apologise to Mr. Bowring for the tardy honours we have bestowed upon his work, which, by its own intrinsic excellence, has already reached a second edition; nor can we refrain from the expression of our high admiration of the healthy tone and the manly vigour which distinguish these productions. The torch of Russian poesy has been kindled by a ray from heaven;" it bares with a lustre as brilliant as it is steady.The Muse stands here invested with her sublimest attributes, and faithful to her trust, and true to her allegiance, the interests of virtue are her joyful theme, and the aim and object even of her more rapturous aspirations.

66

Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, a Dramatic Poem; the Mermaid of Galloway; the Legend of Richard Faulder; and twenty Scottish Songs. By Allan Cunningham. 12mo.

There is in the poets and original writers of Scotland, as well as in their critics, an untamed energy, a remnant of that original ferocity which characterizes human nature, before the softer charms of science have tempered its grossness, and refined the harsher elements of its constitution. Scotchmen, in general, reason closely and acutely, but they feel coarsely and palpably: their sentiments are seldom impressed with the characters of mind or unearthly

sympathy. To that divine communion which exists between kindred spirits, to that sympathy which is the offspring of mentalized and spiritualized feelings, and to all the milder affections which give them character and expression, he is a perfect stranger. His sympathies are what naturally results from his physical propensities, or constitutional temperament, and therefore, the Scotch poets are generally natural, but seldom refined. They write, it is true, as they feel: so far they are right, for feeling is the soul of poetry; but as their feelings are gross, their poetry must be equally so. Such was the poetry of Burns, and such is now the poetry of Cunningham. Mr. Campbell is the only exception, we know of, to the observations which we have made, for, however intimate the Scotch baronet may be with the fairy lands of imagipation, he is a true sawny with regard to delicacy and refinement of feeling, In general, Scotch poets will be found to resemble Dutch painters: they excel only in describing low life, or rather, in caricaturing it. It is not human nature they describe, but some ludi. crous deviation from it. They describe manners, not passions, but so far as the description is true, it must be considered natural, however widely the originals which they copy may be at variance with nature. We do not mean to say that the northern poets do not sometimes describe natural as well as na. tional manners, but we mean to say, that they excel more in the latter, and that they seldom give us a picture of natural manners without enriching it, as they think, with national sentiment. At any rate, whether they describe natural or national manners, they always describe low manners, and conse. quently the resemblance between them and Dutch painters will always bold good; for Sir W. Scott himself, the most favoured of their bards, is a mere describer of low national manners.

We are not therefore to be surprized, if Mr. Cunningham has not surmounted this predeliction for low manners, which characterises all the poets of his coun try, Mr. Campbell excepted. We are far from wishing to depreciate his talents: his genius is original, though confined to one species of poetic excellence. We do not know that he imi. tates the style or manner of any of his countrymen, but he has caught the downward spirit that animates them all. The subject of all his songs, are the love-sick breathings of the Scotch peasantry; but we must confess, we could never discover much nature or true Eur. Mag. Vol. 82.

feeling in professed amatory writers. Perhaps the reason may be, that in love there is no medium between beauty and deformity. The language of love is the language of passion, and passion always tells truth. A real lover, therefore, never speaks but what he feels, though he generally feels more than he ean venture to express. He, who imitates the true lover, must use the same language, though he wants the same feelings. But how difficult is it to

Both

In

express feelings which we do not feel, and with which, consequently, we must be unacquainted. He, who describes love without feeling it, resembles a blind man describing colours. describe what they know nothing about, and, consequently, they have no certainty of being right but while they travel in the footsteps of others. mere imitation, however, there can be no novelty, and without imitation there can be no certainty. Now admitting that an amatory poet, such as Mr. Cunningham, should possess from nature a considerable portion of natural feeling, how is it possible that he can be in love with every new lassie and bonnie lady to whom he professes an attachment? True love is constant and fixed to one object, and, therefore, there is much reason to doubt the sincerity of him, who is in love with a great many at the same time. Hence it is that those, who make a trade of love-songs, seldom succeed in them; they generally substitute false sentiment and unnatural feeling for the genuine effusions of the heart, because these effusions can only be described by those who feel them. We must confess, at the same time, that though these observations apply more or less to Mr. Cunningham, as well as to all other love-poets, (if we make any exception, it must be in favor of Moore) many of his songs are extremely tender and affecting, and as refined as we can expect them to be, coming from Scotch shepherds and swains. But still he frequently outsteps the modesty of nature: he makes his lovers say; or he says himself for them, what no person who really felt the passion would ever think of saying. A lover never thinks of saying any thing but what his passion suggests; as passion, then, would have never sug gested the following far-fetched idea, it is ridiculous to suppose it the language of love. Indeed the whole stanza is a true specimen of the false sublime.

"My love's two eyes are bonnie stars, Born to adorn the summer skies,

31

And I will by our triste-thorn sit
To watch them at their evening rise;
That, when they shine on tower and tree,
Their heav'nly light may fall on me."

Whenever Mr. Cunningham falls into an error of this kind, it arises from the untamed energies of a restless and obtrusive imagination, which perpetually seeks to carry him away from the direct object of his affections to remote images and fanciful situations. Thus he confounds the intense pathos of love with the luxuriant associations of imagination, but in doing so, be only deceives himself, not his mistress. A woman immediately begins to sus pect her lover the moment he begins to raise her to the skies. She knows well, she has no claim to so elevated a situation, and she also knows, that true love deals not in images of any kind. The feelings of the heart bear no analogy to, and consequently cannot be typified by, sensible representations. If the creations of fancy be at all tolerable in a love-song, it must be in the opening of it, were it may serve as an introduction to the ensuing scene. But when passion once begins to speak, imagination must be silent. For this reason we admire the following stanza, with which our author commences one of his love-songs.

"The shepherd seeks his glowing hearth,
The fox calls from the mountain,
The folded flocks are white with rime,
Swans seek the silent fountain;
And midnight starless is and drear,
And Ae's wild waters swelling,
Far up the lonesome greenwood glen,
Where my fair maiden's dwelling."

When we say that the creations of fancy should be religiously excluded from the language of passion, we confine our observation to shorter pieces, such as songs, &c. for the lover who has not much to say, should reserve it all for his mistress, and not waste it in idle and gratuitous declamation: and even in poems of greater length, fancy should never be indulged except where it seems to force itself upon the lover, and to heighten the depth and intenseness of his misery. Whenever it appears to result from a light aud buoyant imagination, instead of heightening it destroys the pathetic, and consequently the poetic effect.

We have dwelt on Mr. Cunningham's songs, as we believe he owes to them the greater portion of his poetic fame, In Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, it is true, there are many beautiful passages;— at least we should call them beautiful,

He

if we were permitted to take the poem in pieces, and judge of every member by itself. But, unhappily, considering it as a whole, there is little dependance on harmony between its parts. excels more in execution and colouring than in original design, and his mind seems never to wander beyond the immediate scene before him. Neither in the classification of facts, nor in the union, harmony or proportion of parts, does he manifest himself a skilful artist; and without these qualities of dramatic excellence, all others are thrown into the shade.

The subject of this poem is the murder of Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, by Halbert Comyne, one of his own kinsmen and retainers, who usurped his castle and estate, but afterwards fell by the hand of his son, the Young Sir Marmaduke. The story derives a considerable portion of its interest from the amours of Sir Marmaduke with the beautiful Mary Douglas, the parlia mentary war in Scotland, Mag Morison, the pretty waiting-maid, and Mabel Moran, the witch. The scene is laid in the beautiful but ruinous castle of Caerlaverock, on the Scottish side of the sea of Solway; and the time of the story is the close of the Common. wealth, under the Second Cromwell.”

Instead of the language of true passion, we have cold and inflated sentiment. The author is continually in the clouds, even when his business is to describe the secret workings of love, and we have no hesitation to say, that there is not a poem in the English language of equal length, except the subject be astronomy, in which the "stars" are so frequently introduced, though we cannot see what analogy there is between love and the stars. -Sir Marmaduke, however, seems to have been of a different opinion, for he counted nearly all the stars in the West while he was waiting for his mistress. This, to us, would not appear as a test of his affection; and we think, also, he paid his mistress no compliment in telling her of it; for if his thoughts were fixed upon her, be certainly could not employ them in counting the stars. Mary Douglas seems also to think the stars busy themselves in love-affairs, for she apprehends they may “turn tell-tales," and disclose their secrets. -Again, she is afraid some star has fallen in love with Sir Marmaduke; and Sir Marmaduke tells her, that he will be to her

"True as these stars are to the cold, clear sky."

For our parts, we are strongly inclined to think, that real lovers seldom go so far as the stars in search of images, and that they find within themselves all that they have occasion to express. Perhaps Mr. Cunningham thinks, that whatever is sublime in nature must be equally so in description. What is improperly introduced cannot be natural in description, even though it be an image taken from nature; and whatever is unnatural, can neither be poetic nor sublime.

Lectures on the Art of Writing. By J. Carstairs, Writing Master. 8vo. pp. 189. 12s. Fifth Edition.

This very useful book has arrived at the fifth edition, and, although it is not usual with us to notice new editions, unless they contain much additional matter, on this occasion we think we consult the interest of our readers by so deviating from our usual course. This volume contains, amongst other matter, observations on the impediments that retard the progress of pu pils who learn to write by means of the old method. It includes a brief his tory of the art, and of the materials that have been in use from the earliest ages to the present time. There are twenty-two plates, which are elucidated by pertinent observations.

Among the multiplicity of improvements that are continually introduced into our mechanic arts, the improvements in the art of penmanship, by Mr. Carstairs, ought to be mentioned with unqualified approbation-by the assistance of his method, which principally consists in the looping of letters and words together, any person however bad his writing, will acquire purity, precision, and celerity in a very few lessons. We should like to see this book introduced into all respectable academies, being assured that the principles of writing inculcated by Mr. Carstairs could not fail to be beneficial to the rising generation, as well as to the majority of adults. We are glad to hear that this new system has been found successful wherever it has been tried; and we hope the industrious author will not be less benefitted than he ought to be, for he has evidently bestowed much labour, and exhibited great ingenuity in maturing a system which teaches pupils of all ages, and both sexes, to write well in one-twentieth part of the time they usually consume in learning to write ill. We recommend our readers to examine the

work, for we are persuaded they will be amply gratified, the process of instruction is so peculiarly simple, novel, and curious. Instead of writing from left to right, the mode constantly pursued in schools from the commencement to the end of instruction, Mr. Carstairs' plan is to make the learner begin at the top of the page and write in a perpendicular direction down the whole length of the page, without lifting the pen, in columns of single letters, and gradually increasing the number of letters from left to right, until the pupil becomes a proficient in the art, which mode must counteract the natural tendency which beginners have of leaning too heavily on the right arm. Mr. Carstairs' method of holding the hand and pen is surely a desideratum in the art, and will tend to lessen the labour of teachers in making their pupils hold the hand and pen correctly. From our own observations on Mr. Carstairs' Lectures, we feel no hesitation in recommending his valuable system to the notice of all, especially those who are employed in teaching penmanship in our scholastic establishments.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater. 12mo. pp. 206. 5s.

This work is the offspring of an ac. curate and vigorous pen; it is divided into two parts, of which the second alone has any relation to opium-eating, and it may be described as ingenious, and containing descriptions of actual sensations, which will, we appre hend, pass with most as the mere fictions of a vigorous fancy: but of the first part we must acknowledge, that, if to awaken the most lively feelings of curiosity and tenderness without effort, and without matter adapted to pathos, be a proof of superior genius, the author of these confessions is undoubtedly entitled to a high degree of commendation from the critic. The first part of the Confessions relate to the author's boyish days. The death of his father, his being left to the care of four guardians, his precoce profici ency in classic lore, and his contempt for his masters. At sixteen the author feels an unexampled fervour to enter the classic halls of Oxford, but sues in vain to "the haughty, obstinate, and intolerant" man, who, of the four nominated guardians, was the only one who would consent to act in that capacity. According to the dramatist and novellist, a crabbed guardian of a young lady is in natura rerum a cause