men Sees. to repose wholly on continental industry: Und bringe die Göttinn zum Bade des einsato the praiseworthy names of Gräter, of Rozen, and of Nyerup, we trust that Great Britain will ere long have that of Herbert to oppose. "Es vereine Lovna, voll Nossa's Reizen, Wie Sait' und Gesang, die Lieb' und die "Ist Achäa der Thuiskonen Vaterland? "Vom Schwert, gegen den Eroberer ge- lehr euch Wodan." ART. V.-The Song of the Sun; a Poem of the Eleventh Century; from the more ancient Icelandic Collection called the Edda. Imitated by the Rev. JAMES BERESFORD, A. M. Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. With a Preface, Notes, and short Account of the Author. 8vo. pp. 103. We deny the fact; we contest the system. We maintain that the poets, who have flourished during the reign of George the third, have produced as great a quantity of lasting poetry, as those who flourished during the reign of Elizabeth, or during any other half-century of the British annals. The tragedies of that age live; so will the comedies of ours. Our chorus-dramas, and our ballads, are decidedly superior to those of our ancestors: so are our elegies, and songs, and odes. One good translation, Fairfax's Tasso, has been bequeathed to us from the times of Elizabeth: we have Sotheby's Oberon, and several other master-pieces, whose collective weight makes a counterpoise. And why should a rude age be favourable to the production of good poetry? Rudeness implies a public of bad critics; an ignorance of history, of antiquities, of the limits of nature, likely to tolerate the absurdest violations of truth, costume, geography, and probability. Accordingly, the poets of rude ages, who are neither more nor less likely than others to have genius, commonly offend by want of taste: and this frequently in so great a degree, as to condemn their works to be refashioned; in which case, the modernizer runs away with the praise. Homer indeed originated early, but was probably corrected by a good critic, in an age of taste. Tasso, who has produced the next best poem to Homer, flourished in the autumn, not the spring, of Italian culture. Virgil bloomed in an age of refinement, and Claudian was still a poet. The funeral song of Hacon is a fine ode: but so is the bard of Gray. The tragedies of Schiller, the fabliaux of Wieland, were composed at the very close of the eighteenth century; just before the French revolution had blunted the acme of human refinement. The proportion of good specimens of poetry produced in rude times is very small. Mr. Beresford, no doubt, considers the song of the sun, as among these specimens. It forms one rhapsody of the Sæmundine Edda, which was composed, or compiled in Iceland, about the close of the eleventh century, and re-edited at Copenhagen in 1787. Sæmund, the author, was a son of Sigfusar, a pagan priest, and of Thoreya: but having been taken to Rome, by Jonas, the christian bishop of Hola, he embraced the religion of the south, and came home to propagate it. He seems to have met with the gospel of Nicodemus, and with other legendary books of that kind; for he introduces many descriptions, which Dante, and other early poets, also selected from the same sources. He did not practise celibacy, but married Gudruna, and lived to see his grandchildren eminent. He is praised for preventing a civil war between the chieftains Thorgil and Haflid; and for composing, or collecting, not only these mythological, but other historical, sagas. He died at the age of eighty. This poem describes the death and descent to the nether world of the writer, who professes to have dictated it from the grave. We transcribe the most striking portion. "36. But The All-Potent with his pow'r prevail'd: Swift are the last approaches to the grave. Fall o'er their noses, Waking hatred among the living. 77. The wife of Odin 78. Heir, thy father With the sons of sunshine, And breathed through the hart's hori Which the wise shunner of battles 79. These are the words The nine daughters of Niard; 80. Every where They abate Cold and Blame; (Sualr ok suafr·legi Blood they staunch, Wounds they suck, And smooth the waves like oil. To these six stanzas Mr. Beresford substitutes the following three. 75. Father Omnipotent! Puissant Son! All-holy Spirit-hear thy servant pray! To thee I pray, who gavest man to be, Take us,-O take from miseries all away! 78. These healing strains, my son, I, sole of men, With those that in the sun's bright courts were bred, Have learn'd for thy behoof; to me, erewhile, Brought by my sage instructor from the dead. 79. By the nine daughters to Niardar born Was plough'd in leaves of brass my deathless lore; The first-born skill'd to bend the soul; the last Queen of sweet song;—with those sev'n sisters more. Of these three, the seventy-eighth appears to us to have been misunderstood. The poet means to say: My heir, thy father alone is one, who has frequented the sons of light (literature); though dead, he yet speaketh; the shanner of battles, who is wise, is still heard from the tomb. . We invite the readers of Dante to compare this northern skald with the Italian poet. There is so much analogy in the plan of their compositions, that we are persuaded some monkish legend will yet be discovered, of which both the writers had availed themselves. If the northern rhymer has too much abridged, the southern has too much expanded his theme; so that one may be allowed to hesitate which guide to prefer into the infernal regions, If Sæmund has nothing very striking to exhibit, Dante is so talkative a showman, that he makes even of a striking a tedious exhibition. We believe, however, that he has so much more force, fancy, and invention, than his Icelandish competitor, that readers and critics will on the whole prefer his hell, and inscribe over it. Per mé si va nella città dolente: But we do not quit all hope, that those who enter on such perusals may yet find a superior guide. Mr. Beresford has executed a meritorious task with considerable elegance: he does not possess the learning of Herbert in the northern languages: but he displays the reading, the taste, and acccomplishment, of an educated and travelled man. ART. VI.—Poems and Plays.. By WILLIAM RICHARDSON, A., M. Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow. 2 vols. 12mo. A new Edition. MR. RICHARDSON has collected, into two elegant pocket-volumes, the scattered productions of his muse. Three little poems only are inserted which have never before made their appearance; they are not very interesting, and certainly we feel not the slightest inducement on the present occasion to deviate from our original determination, only to notice the new edition of a work when it urges a claim to attention by additional matter, ART. VII.-Fugitive Poems. By Mrs. BAYFIELD, 12mo. pp. 192. MANY of these poems are addressed by the author to her children and her husband, whose duty as an officer in the army called him upon a foreign service; and do credit to the feelings of the author as a mother and a wife. They are introduced by a numerous and a respectable list of subscribers, who have no reason to blush at this extension of their patronage. ART. VIII.-Valle Crucis Abbey; or the Vision of the Vale, a Poem. 12mo. pp. 160. IN these lines we find a larger portion of politics than of poetry. ART. IX.-The Rustic: a Poem in four Cantos. By EWAN CLARK. 12mo. pp. 119. "SING we Man's life through each pro gressive stage, From lisping infancy to silver'd age. Such is the subject of this poem: Mr. Ewan Clark has seen his seventieth year,' and very innocently employed his hours of retirement and repose in describing the rustic festivities which he had witnessed, and perhaps participated, in his earlier days. It would be unreasonable to expect from old age all the fancy of youth; nor are we disposed to be censorious, and claim much from him whose pretensions are humble: "My muse for lofty pitches shall not roam, But homely piper of her native home.” This is Mr. Clark's motto, and a very unassuming and appropriate one it is. His descriptions of rustic sports are, we dare say, very faithful, and some of them are not destitute of animation: particularly that of blind-man's buff, the dance of the lads and lasses in the barn, &c. ART. X.-Ruth a sacred Eclogue; and Tobit, a Poem. With two select moral Tales, translated from the Work, and preceded by the Life of M. de Florian, Member of the Academies of France, Madrid, and Florence. By S. MAXEY. 12mo. pp. 122. With Ex gravings. THE writings of this elegant moralist and amiable man are dear to all those who have at heart the interest of virtue and humanity. Many of M. Florian's tales and novels have been translated into our language, and they cannot be too strongly recommended to young persons: "Ruth" and " Tobit," however, can no where be read with so much effect as in the simple language of the Bible. Mr. Maxey's translations are very bald: this fault probably arises from an over-anxious desire not to deviate from the simplicity of his origi, nal. "The Spanish Courser," and "The French Pullet," are the two tales which he has selected from the miscellaneous works of Florian, together with a "Hymn to Friendship," addressed by the author to Boissy d'Anglas, who, in the hour of peril, when his friend was under the proscription of Robespierre, lingering in the Cociergerie, and waiting death, had the cou rage to stand forward in his defence, and to plead, with undaunted perseverance, for his liberation. This event, however, would probably have not taken place but for the ninth of Thermidor, which ridded France of the sanguinary monster. Boissy d'Anglas at length succeeded, and Florian retired to the Parc de Sceanx, where be soon afterwards died in the 39th year of his age. ART. XI.-Half an Hour's Lounge: or Poems, by RICHMAL MANGNALL. 12mo. pp. 80, THE dedication is as unassuming as the title-page: "To my own family, these. trifles are inscribed by an affectionate sister and friend." "Tis true they are only trifles; but we have often lounged away a half-hour much less agreeably than in company with this incognita, who, we suspect, has concealed her real name within the mystery of an anagram. ART. XII.-Fatal Curiosity; or the Vision of Sylvester: a Poem in three Books. By JoSEPH BOUNDEN. 12mo. pp. 112. WOE to the wight whose "fatal curiosity" leads him to cut open these lethargic leaves! His heavy slumbers will certainly be unblest by the genius of poetry. ART. XIII.-The Battle of Largs: a Gothic Poem. With several miscellaneous Pieces. 12mo. pp. 76. BELOW the rank of great poets who have united, in a considerable degree, almost all the different requisites of their art, there exists a class of writers who occasion no small trouble and perplexity to us periodical critics. We mean those in whom some genuine poetic lineaments appear so meanly clothed or ill-accompanied, that we are more than half-ashamed to acknowledge them. To apportion to each of these his due share of applause and censure, encouragement and reproof; to discriminate between the rude vigour of untutored genius, and the cold extravagance of labouring mediocrity; between lively ignorance which seeks to learn, and dull conceit that never can be taught is certainly no easy task. Each individual reader will determine for himself what qualities he most requires in verse, or best can do without; and however particular criticisms may be approved as just, no general verdict can be expected to meet the full assent of one poetic judge in ten. These observations have almost unavoid ably arisen from the work before us, which we proceed more closely to examine. The battle fought at Largs, in Ayrshire, A.D. 1263, was that in which Alexander the Third of Scotland, after a bloody and obstinate conflict, totally defeated Hako king of Norway, who, having subdued the isles of Bute and Arran, had landed on the coast of Cunningham. The baffled invaters fled for refuge to their ships, and a storm ensuing, many of them were wrecked. King Hako reached the Ork neys in safety, where he landed; but soon after died, as is said, of a broken heart. At the present period, many circumstances would unite in giving an interest to this ancient tale if narrated with spirit and distinctness. But our author has unfor tunately fallen into several essential faults, In the first place, he has encumbered his little poem with a most uncouth mas chinery. The three fatal sisters of northern mythology open with an address to Lok, and afterwards hold several conversations among themselves, all highly flavoured from the dregs of Shakspeare's witch-cauldron. Secondly, the narrative is often impeded by sentences of turgid bombast, delivered in lines so harsh and tuneless, that it is hard to say whether it will be found more difficult to understand or to read them: and, thirdly, the poem ends in a most abrupt and unsatisfactory manner. The author has evidently, in his principal poem, aimed at more than he is at present equal to; but from parts of it, and from some of the smaller pieces, we are inclined to augur well of his futture proficiency, provided he will take pains to refine his style, and learn that coarseness is not strength, nor strangeness sublimity. For the description of natural objects he appears to have considerable talent. "With shrill short shrieks the petterels past Before the howling hurrying blast; Bold birds, that o'er the desert deep On vague adventures swiftly sweep; The marine sportsman's aiming eye, The following passage, with many faults, has most of those excellences which seem to mark out the author for a youth indeed, but a youth of some genius. "As o'er the main an isle of ice His milkwhite charger pranc'd along, Revenge, revenge, our fathers fall.' The Danes are rous'd, the battle burns, The Scots recoil, and hope returns; Enormous carnage swells beneath, Gorg'd with the revelries of Death. As when the clouds, by tempests driven Confus'd along the fields of heaven, Hurl darkly wild, on every side Before the eddying battle's tide; The Scots retire, for now the Danes (As o'er the trim Batavian plains, When rous'd by storms, the billows roar Through the torn barriers of the shore; And on the deluge, raving loose, Rides Ruin multitudinous) Roll'd bloody, and behind them spread In heaps the dying and the dead." To point out more minutely the ble mishes of this work, as bad rhymes, imperfect sentences, distorted phrases, redundant ornaments, and violent metaphors, would be loss of time to us and our readers: as for the author, if he has good sense, he will in time amend himself; if not, our criticism cannot amend him. With one of his elegant trifles we conclude. "Deride me not, but softly tell Thee I have met with fond surprise When round the social board I sit, |