Nor can we perceive any symptoms of tation among our poets is a terrible recovery from this state of "suspended sameness or mannerism in each of those animation" in what has been lately who have been encouraged to write added as the completion of the poem; much; and the worst of it is, that each we shall watch, however, like one of of these luminaries, while he moves in the agents of the Humane Society, for his own orbit in perpetual parallelism the signs of returning life, and consider with himself, has a crowd of little moons the rescue of such a muse as that of attending him, that multiply the maligMr. Coleridge from suffocation by sub- nant influence, and propagate the demersion as some gain to the cause of ceptious glare. But the most insuffertrue poetry. able of all the different forms which modern affectation in composition has assumed, is the cant and gibberish of the German school, which has filled all the provinces, as well of imagination as of science, with profound nonsense, unintelligible refinement, metaphysical morals, and mental distortion. Its perfection and its boast, is to be fairly franchised from all the rules and restraints of common sense and common nature; and if domestic events and social manners are the theme, all the natural affections, ties, charities, and emotions of the heart, are displaced by a monstrous progeny of vice and sentiment, an assemblage of ludicrous horrors, or a rabble of undisciplined feelings. We shall hail the day, as a day of happy auspices for the moral muse, when our present fanatic race of poets shall have exhausted all their "monstrous shapes and sorceries," and the abused understandings of our countrymen shall break these unhappy spells, forsake the society of demons, and be divorced from deformity. To us especially, whose duty condemns us to the horrible drudgery of reading whatever men of a certain reputation may choose to write, it will be a great refreshment, if it be only for the novelty of the scene, to find ourselves once more, if not at the fount of Helicon, or on the summit of Parnassus, yet at least in a region where fog and gloom are not perpetual, and poetry is so far mindful of its origin and ancient character as to proceed in the path of intelligibility, and to propose to itself some meaning and purpose, if not some moral end. In the preceding paragraph of the preface, Mr. Coleridge discovers no small anxiety to obviate the suspicion of having borrowed any part of this poem from any of our celebrated poets," and this accounts for his particularity with respect to the chronology of the performance, which, short as it is, appears at each stage of it to have occasioned so much mental exhaustion as to demand long restorative intermissions. We never suspected Mr. Coleridge of plagiarism, and think he betrays an unreasonable mistrust of the credit which the critics will give him for originality. Our own opinion most decidedly is that he is honestly entitled to all the eccentricities of this poem; and that in asserting his exclusive property in them, he has done great negative justice to the rest of the literary world. Lord Byron seems as anxious to remove from himself the imputation of having borrowed from the author of Christabel. With this question we shall not trouble ourselves where two are afflicted with an epidemic, it is of little importance which caught it of the other, so long as we can escape the contagion. The epidemic among modern poets is the disease of affectation, which is for ever carrying them into quaint, absurd, and outrageous extremes. One is determined to say nothing in a natural way, another is for saying every thing with infantine simplicity, while a third is persuaded that there is but one language for the drawing room, the Royal Exchange, the talk of the table, and the temple of the Muses. One consequence of this fatal propensity to affec 'And now for this "wild and singu and beautiful poem," the old toothless bitch shall turn out for his entertainment; and he shall go with Christabel into the wood and attend her there until she meets with Lady Geraldine. larly original and beautiful poem" of time have some curiosity to see a little Christabel. Could Lord Byron, the of this "wild and singularly original author of this pithy sentence, show us wherein consists its singular beauty? This is the only specimen we have yet seen of his lordship's critical powers; but from the experience we have had of bis lordship's taste in these matters, we do not think he could give a better account of the principles of his admiration, or dilate with better success on the meaning of his sententious eulogium, than the bookseller who has borrowed its magical influence in all his advertisements of this poem. We learn two things, and two things only, with certainty, from this "wild and singularly original and beautiful poem:" that Sir Leoline was "rich," and that he "had a toothless mastiff bitch ;" and if any one should be so unpoetical as to ask in plain terms what these two circumstances have to do with the business, story, or catastrophe of the poem, we must frankly confess that, wise as we are, we cannot tell; nor do we know to whom to refer him for information, unless it be to Lord Byron. The last person he should apply to in this distressing diff culty is the writer himself, who, if he has written with the true inspiration of a poet of the present day, would laugh at the ignorance of those who should expect him to understand himself, and tell them that by the laws and usages of modern poetry it was for the reader and the old toothless bitch to make out the meaning as they could between them. • From the moment we leave the picturesque old lady (for we cannot but suspect the bitch to be a witch in that form) all is impenetrable to us, except the exact information which the poet gives us, that " the night was chilly but not dark," and the strong suspicion we are led to entertain from its being "the month before the month of May," that it could not be, after all, any other than that month which a plain man would call April. As our readers may by this "Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. "Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, From her kennel beneath the rock Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; "Is the night chilly and dark? The moon is behind, and at the full; And yet she looks both small and dull. "The lovely lady Christabel, She stole along, she nothing spoke, "The lady leaps up suddenly, "The night is chill; the forest bare; On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. She folded her arms beneath her cloak, "There she sees a damsel bright, spells were wrought both upon Christabel and Sir Leoline, producing strange external and internal transformations, is evident; but what is meant to be understood to bave been actually done, to what purpose, how produced, or with what consequences to the parties, we know as little as Mr. Coleridge himself. We should not be much surprised if the Now this strange lady, who is, to object of the poet was to make fools of be sure, some preternatural personage, the public, having observed Lord Byron comes home with Christabel, and passes to have succeeded so well in this art; the night with her. What the result of and if it was really published on the this adventure was is so very darkly inti- first of "the month before the month of mated, that it would be hazardous to May," we cannot altogether disapprove frame a conjecture. That all was not of the pleasantry." as it should be, that some mysterious ART. 3. Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand; a Tragedy in Five Acts. By the Rev. R. C. Maturin. Fourth Edition. 8vo. pp. 80. Murray. London. THE HE reverend Mr. Maturin, better lament it, if true, that since he has known to our readers under the name thrown off the disguise of a fictitious of Dennis Jasper Murphy, as the au- name, under which he had long successthor of the Wild Irish Boy, the Fatal fully cloaked himself, he has beendeRevenge, the Milesian Chief, &c. &c. graded from his preferments in the has gone as far in outraging taste, mo- church. desty, virtue, nature, and religion, as the most admired of his cotemporaries. All his productions bear strong marks of family likeness ;-all display talent, all teem with extravagance, all tend to immorality. The tragedy of Bertram is stamped with his characteristic lineaments, and is altogether worthy of his genius. The British Reviewers, to whom we are indebted for the remarks on this Drama, bave very justly availed themselves of so fair an opportunity to animadvert on the gross indecorum of making the solemnity of prayer a matter of mimicry. Appeals to heaven are allowable only on important occasions. of real life, and should be the aspiraHow such horrible fantasies, as he is tions of sincerity; but when both the constantly, though unavailingly, exer- scene and the sentiment are feigned, cising, should ever have got possession they are shocking profanations. Were of a mind disciplined to the duties of it even possible for the spectators to his sacred function, we are utterly at a enter into the illusion, it should yet be loss to imagine. The indulgence of remembered that there is One, who them seems scarcely compatible with cannot be deceived, and will not be the devoutness requisite in him, whose mocked." office it is to minister in holy things.' The following Review should be We have heard, indeed, and we cannot read in connexion with the preceding one of the Christabel,' of which it is a objects which bear the poet aloft on continuation. seraph's wings, 'Come we now from the Castle of "And wake to ecstasy the living lyre." Sir Leoline to the castle of St. Aldo- 'The very Dramatis Persona of this brand. The change is so far an advan- performance sufficiently announces to tage to us, that we are no longer un- us what we are to expect, and particuder a necessity to grope in the dark larly the ominous line at the bottom of for a meaning. Every thing in this the page, "Knights, Monks, Soldiers, quarter is obvious and palpable enough. Banditti, &c. &c." recalled to our minds We are still, however, in the school of the alarm which we felt on reading the influence of which we have been Lord Byron's motto to his last redoubtacomplaining. Rotten principles and a ble performance, "Guns, trumpets, bastard sort of sentiment, such, in short, blunderbusses, drums, and thunder." as have been imported into this coun- The story of this piece is told in a try from German moralists and poets, very few lines. Count Bertram, a noform the interest of this stormy and bleman of Sicily, high in the favour of extravagant composition. The piece his Sovereign, was attached to Imogine, is so much in the taste of Lord Byron, a young lady of comparatively humble that the public have let that nobleman birth, who returned his love with an into a large share of the credit of the equal passion. By a sad reverse, the performance. How that may be we consequence of his ambition and rebeldare not say; but we venture to advise lion, the count is deprived of all his the reverend dramatist, for the sake of fortune and honours, and banished from the holy and immortal interests con- his native land. With a band of desnected with his profession, to withdraw perate followers he continues to keep himself from all connexion with Lord the shores and the state itself in alarm. Byron's tainted muse, and to the great- His great enemy and fortunate rival, to est distance he possibly can from the whose ascendancy he was forced to circle within which the demons of sen- give way, is St. Aldobrand, a valiant timental profligacy exert their perni- and loyal subject, who, to complete the cious incantations. The best amulet mortification of the discomfited rebel, we can recommend him to use by way obtains the hand of Imogine in the abof security against the influence of these sence of her first lover. The lady's spells and sorceries, is the frequent, excuse for this breach of constancy is the perpetual perusal of the word of the starving state of a parent, whose God, of which it is his happy privilege wants she is thus enabled to relieve. to be the organ and expounder. Let Count Bertram, with his desperate him bind it for a sign upon his hand, band of followers, is shipwrecked upon and let it be as a frontlet between his the coast near the monastery of St, eyes, and he may set at nought all the Anselm, and within a little distance of fascinations of depraved poetical ex- the castle of St. Aldobrand. They are amples. In that source of sublimity, received at the monastery with the hos simplicity, and beauty, will be found pitality usual in such places, and soon a holy standard of moral perfection, a after a message comes from the fair magnificent display of real grandeur, Imogine to invite the shipwrecked voyatowards which the soul may erect it- gers to the castle of St. Aldobrand, as self in an attitude of correspondent ele- being capable of affording them better vation, and carry its views safely be- accommodation and refreshment than yond the boundaries of material exist- the convent. In the mean time, in a ence into regions of intellectual splen- conversation with the prior of the condour, and among those happy inspiring vent, Count Bertram reveals, himself; VOL. I. NO. 1. C Ber. wretched. Stay, gentle lady, I would somewhat (Imogine retreats terrified) There was a voice which all the world, but thee, Imo. My senses blaze-between the dead and and makes a full declaration with all Pray, when thou tell'st thy beads, for one more the bitterness and rage of disappointed passion, and his deadly hate towards St. Aldobrand, and determined purpose of destroying him. He is made acquainted with the temporary absence of his enemy, then with the Knights of St. Anselm. Upon learning this he expresses a horrid joy, considering the opportunity is now arrived of satiating to the castle of his vengeance. He goes St. Aldobrand, where his followers are feasted. His interview with Imogine, and the dire impressions on his mind when the full disclosure of her situation is made to him, are exhibited in a scene of great tragic pathos and terror; and, in justice to the poet, we will here place it before the reader. Bertram comes to the end of the stage, and stands without looking at her. Imo. Stranger, I sent for thee, for that I deemed Some wound was thine, that yon free band might chafe, Perchance thy worldly wealth sunk with yon wreck; Such wound my gold can heal-the castle's al moner Ber. The wealth of worlds were heaped on Imo. Oh then I read thy loss-thy heart is sunk "Yet if I could collect my faltering breath Ber. (striking his heart) No dews give fresh- Imo. Strange is thy form, but more thy words Fearful it seems to hold this parley with thec. Ber. What avails it? The wretched have no country: that dear name Imo. I shake to hear him-- I burnt features stand in fear-ob God-it cannot be Ber. Imogine (she has tottered towards him during the last speech, and when he utters her name, shrieks and falls into his arms.) Ber. Imogine-yes, To be enfolded to this desolate heart Thus pale, cold, dying, thus thou art most fit A blighted lily on its icy bed Nay, look not up, 'tis thus I would behold thee, more That fair, that pale, dear cheek, these helpless arms, If I look longer they will make me human. To do thee dead. Ber. Then let them wield the thunder, Oh God! Ber. Imogine-madness seizes me- Thou canst not be-my throat is swoln with Hell hath no plague-Oh no, thou couldst not do it. Imo. "(kneeling)" Mercy. Ber. Thou hast it not, or thou wouldst speak---` To save a famishing father did I wed. Imo. Aye---curse, and consummate the horrid For broken-hearted, in despairing hour |