And from the verdant turf aprear'd,
He on his friend contemptuous leer'd:
Stretch'd his lean neck, and wildly stared,
His dulcet pitch-pipe then prepared,
His flaky ears prick'd up withal,
And stood in posture musical.

Ah! thought the stag, I greatly fear,
Since he his throat begins to clear,
And strains and stares, he will not long,
Deprive us of his promised song.
Friendship to safety well may yield.'
He said, and nimbly fled the field.

Alone at length, the warbler ass
Would every former strain surpass;
So right he ain'd, so loud he bray'd,
The forest shook, night seem d afraid,
And starting at the well-known sound,
The gard'ners from their pallets bound;

The scared musician this pursues,
That stops him with insidious noose;
Now to a tree behold him tied,
Whilst both prepare to take his hide.
But first his cudgel either rears,
And plies his ribs, his nose, his ears;
His head converted to a jelly,
His back confounded with his belly;
All bruised without, all broke within,
To leaves they now convert his skin;
Whereon, in characters of gold,
For all good asses, young and old
This short instructive tale is told."

The picture of the songster is very striking, and the whole extract shows that Mr. Hoppner would have worked better on better materials.

THE best lines in this poem are those in which the author expresses his patriotic wishes and his private feelings.

"How have thy wrongs, O Erin, wrung my breast,

Thy people, goaded, beggar'd, and oppress'd, How, have I prov'd, each pang, and felt, each

smart,

And, bore thy sorrows, in my aching heart; May, heav'n propitious, hear, my ardent pray'r,

And, make, O! make thee, its, peculiar, care. 'Mongst nations, give thee, thy, imperial place,

Restore, thy learning, and, revive, thy grace,
Snatch thee from civil and intestine strife,
That arms a brother 'gainst a brother's life:
By lenient laws restrain the restless mind;
And different sects in holy union bind:
Tune their discordant tongues to sweet ac-
cord,

And sheathe, for ever, the devouring sword. Laws! fram'd to harmonize contrarious creeds,

And heal the wounds thro' which a nation bleeds:

Laws, that should mitigate a people's woes;
And inake them dreadful only to their foes.
Christ's righteous canon!-politic, as just,
To kings committed as a sacred trust;
That truly pious and pacific code,.
To God's eternal house the ample road:
Laws!-mild, impartial, tolerant, and fixed,
A hond of union for a people mix'd.
Such as good Calvert fram'd for Baltimore,
And Pean, the Nuna of th' Atlantic shore.
Happy the land! where laws like these pre-
vail,

To guide the private, guard the public weal; Where faction dares not raise his hideous form,

Nor bigot frenzy conjure up the storm?

Where all fulfil the strict command He gave, Who came to suffer, but who came to save; And own his truth divine-though tyrants frown,

That they who bear his cross shall wear his crown."

"And thou! who on life's stormy ocean

tost,

My fortunes fled-my country's franchise lost, My brk conducted through a world of woes, Calm'd my sad heart and sooth'd it to repose; Bless'd be the hour that link'd thy fate with mine,

And bade our stars, as kindred stars to shine; Bless'd be that guiding hand-that angel form, That mark'd my way and snatch'd me from the storm,

Gave me dear pledges of thy care and love, And seem'd a saving mercy from above.This let me pay the debt to truth I owe, And boundless gratitude while here below: The meed awaits thee, in an higher sphere, These fading flow'rs, my feeble off ring here. And if the wreath my trembling fingers twine, Of florets fresh, with tendrils from the vine, Be rudely wrought-excuse my tearful eyes And throbbing heart, that o'er my country sighs;

Sighs, for her slaughter'd sons,—a bloodstain'd band,

And all the horrors that pollute the land.-
Long may our ruling destinies unite,
In spite of envy, and, in fortune's spite;
And many years of health and pleasure past,
May that which shall divide us-be my list!
May then thy thread of life, not rudely torn,
But gently rais'd,--on seraph's wing be born;
To Porti-Arria-Pembroke-Russel rise,,
Aud form a new galaxy in the skies.
There, mingling with the good and virtuous,
shine,

With heav'nly lustre, and a light divine.

poet. But Mr. Barry's fame will rest Adelphi, as they are now the only public upon his own works; his pictures in the monument of the art in this kingdom, are likely long to be the best. His merit is when it is too late, that it has met with acknowledged, and the nation will regret, no better reward. Before Mr. Barry will have been ten years in his grave, the Venus Anaduomene and the Pandora will singly be purchased, and cheaply purchased, for a larger sum, than all the labours of the living artist have ever obtained. His works will be the boast of England, and his history its opprobrium.

WHEN the Sibyl asked a specific price for her poems, and was refused, she burnt a portion of them. She then asked the same price for the remainder, and was again refused, but with more hesitation. At length she burnt another third, and obtained her original demand for the residue. Could Mr. Southey imitate the conduct of the Sibyl, it would be attended with equal advantage.. The poetic rank to which he aspires, would long ago have been conceded, had he laid before us only the specimens of his excellence: he has half-buried his reputation beneath the quantity of his productions.

His Old Woman of Berkley is the best original English ballad extant. Were he known as a ballad-maker only, by that he would stand at the head of the poets in this line; but having produced many ballads of secondary value, he incurs appretiation at the average, and not at the highest rate of his production.

Mr. Southey is adapted for a writer of ballads. He is unaffected beyond all our pocts. He never steps aside to pick up an ornament, nor strains the language for a curious felicity. The cleanly simplicity of the good old time adheres to his thoughts and to his expressions. He is natural even to excess; for artists ought to skip, in their delineations, all the uninteresting features; he usually pourtrays too much. He paints external nature with the deceptive fidelity of the Flemish school, but with too many touches, and with insufficient selection of object. Nor is it in description only that his copiousness borders on prolixity; in the very wording of his phrases, there is a redundance of expletive and unmeaning particles, of fors and ands and theres and

upons, which, in any other form of composition than the ballad, where one is accustomed to it, would be insupportably trailing. In the rhetorical figure called repetition, Mr. Southey delights; in short, he has all the resources of amplification at command: what he has to learn is to curtail and condense. Milton and Pope are the writers he should study; he has too much of the Spenser and Dryden extberance already.

The first of these metrical tales relates God's judgment on bishop Hatto, who, having caused the death of the poor during a famine, was devoured by rats. The catastrophe is well told, the arrival of the army of rats is described with living moveineut; but the incident at the barn was too tragical to form a subordinate part of any narrative, or to be ludicrously avenged.

The pious painter again is somewhat faulty in the structure of the fable: for when Beclzebub is found in the prison, and then vanishes in lightning, it seems obvious to arrest the painter again, and to chain him as before: one is not satisfied that the story is at an end.

St. Michael's Chair is one of the poems which the author should have suffered to perish in the Anthology, where it first appeared. Rebecca Penlake is a religious woman, who, during the sickness of her husband, vows to saint Michael a gift of six marks, in case of his recovery. With honest piety she collects her little savings, and urges her husband, as soon as he is well enough, to travel with her to saint Michael's church, in order to discharge the sacred debt. On the steeple of this church is a chair, which projects over the eaves: and tradition vouches that evety

woman, who has the courage to sit in it, will be mistress in her own house. Rebecca is eager to climb the steeple, and to sit in the chair: she falls from the battlements, and is dashed to pieces on the grave-stones. From this incident an attempt is made to extract mirth: the husband orders the bell not to be toll'd for her death, lest it should wake her. If this story had had a lewd turn, the author would on no account have related it; he is too much so at times for probability of character in his heroes. How can he permit himself, one of the chastest of our poets, the greater immorality of attempt ing to excite laughter, where pity was due; and of tickling away the frown, which ought to arise at the ingratitude and cruelty of this unfeeling, this abomin

able husband?

The ballad of a young man that would read unlawful books is very impressive; and moreover remarkable, as it seems to contain the germ of the Old Woman of Berkeley.

"Cornelius Agrippa went out one day,
His study he lock'd ere he went away,
And he gave the key of the door to his wife,
And charg'd her to keep it lock'd, on her life.

And if any one ask my study to see,
I charge you trust them not with the key,
Whoever may beg, and intreat, and implore,
On your life let nobody enter that door.

There liv'd a young man in the house who in vain

Access to that study had sought to obtain,

And he begg'd and pray'd the books to see, Till the foolish woman gave him the key.

On the study-table a book there lay, Which Agrippa himself had been reading that day,

The letters were written with blood within,
And the leaves were made of dead men's skin

And these horrible leaves of magic between
Were the ugliest pictures that ever were seen,
The likeness of things so foul to behold,
That what they were, is not fit to be told.
The young man, he began to read
He knew not what, but he would proceed,
When there was heard a sound at the door
Which as he read on grew more and more.
And more and more the knocking grew,
The young man knew not what to do;
But trembling in fear he sat within,
Tell the door was broke and the devil came in.

Two hideous horns on his head he had got
Like iron heated nine times red hot;
The breath of his nostrils was brimstone blue,
And his tail like a fiery serpent grew.

Henceforth let all young men take heed
How in a Conjurer's books they read.”

A more serious moral would have converted the poem into a fine and impres sive allegory.

King Charlemain is a lively story, but narrated with less display of descriptive force than is usual with the writer.

Saint Romuald is somewhat liable to. the same moral objection as Saint Michael's Chair; that the predominant finsh emotion is that, which ought not to prevail; that which Voltaire and the perverters of moral taste would have chosen to excite; but the poem is executed in Peter Pindar's best manner, and with rival ease and vivacity.

The Well of Saint Keyne, which is built on the same frame of satire as Saint Michael's Chair, is exquisitely managed, the reader is here not compelled to bestow a smile which he disapproves. There are few comic ballads equal to this: the three last stanzas are especially admirable. The ten first stanzas may be censured as ditfuse; but the protraction of expectation is on the whole favourable to the effect of the close.

Bishop Bruno is a well-executed narra tion; if any thing is wanting, it is some specific motive for his soul's being re quired of him that night. We are again tempted to transcribe:

"Bishop Bruno awoke in the dead midnight, And he heard his heart beat loud with adright: He dreamt he had rung the palace bell, And the sound it gave was his passing knell.

Bishop Bruno smiled at his fears so vain,
He turned to sleep and he dreamt again:
He rung at the palace gate once more,
And Death was the porter that opened the
door.

He started up at the fearful dream,

And he heard at his window the screech owl

scream!

Bishop Bruno slept no more that night,..
Oh! glad was he when he saw the day light!

Now he goes forth in proud array,
For he with the emperor dines to-day;
There was not a baron in Germany
That went with a nobler train than he.

Before and behind his soldiers ride,
The people throng'd to see their pride;
They bow'd the head, and the knee they bent,
But nobody blest him as he went.

So he went on stately and proud,
When he heard a voice that cried aloud,
Ho! ho! bishop Bruno! you travel with
glee,..

But I would have you know, you travel to me!

Behind and before and on either side,
He look'd, but nobody he espied:
And the bishop at that grew cold with fear,
For he heard the words distinct and clear,

And when he rung at the palace bell,
He almost expected to hear his knell :
And when the porter turn'd the key,
He almost expected Death to see.

But soon the bishop recover'd his glee,
For the emperor welcomed him royally;
And now the tables were spread, and there
Were choicest wines and dainty fare.

And now the bishop had blest the meat,
When a voice was heard as he sat in his seat,..
With the emperor now you are dining in glee,
But know, bishop Bruno! you sup with me!

The bishop then grew pale with affright,
And suddenly lost his appetite;
All the wine and dainty cheer

Could not comfort his heart so sick with fear.

But by little and little recovered he,
For the wine went flowing merrily,
And he forgot his former dread,
And his cheeks again grew rosy red.

When he sat down to the royal fare
Bishop Bruno was the saddest man there;
But when the masquers entered the hall,
He was the merriest man of all.
Then from amid the masquers crowd
There went a voice hollow and loud,..

You have past the day, bishop Bruno, with glee!

But you must pass the night with me!

His check grows pale and his eye-balls glare; And stiff round his tonsure bristles his hair; With that there came one from the masquers band,

And took the bishop by the hand.

The bony hand suspended his breath,
His marrow grew cold at the touch of Death;
On saints in vain he attempted to call,
Bishop Bruno fell dead in the palace hall."

The battle of Blenheim is not adapted to become a popular poem: it thwarts chooses to value high the successful mili a certain instinctive patriotism, which tary efforts of our countrymen, in order that a succession of life-riskers may rise up for our defence. The condition of mankind is not sufficiently secure against violence, to cashier the protecting force of rival violence. When we want Marlboroughs, we must praise Marlboroughs. It is better to call forth military talent under the constitution than over the constitution. There is no alternative. The anti-warlike revolutionists of France must submit to the will of the warlike revolutionists. Poets, pray continue to praise heroes!

Saint Gualberto is a more finished piece of versification than this poet often executes: it shows that neat writing is in Mr. Southey's power, whenever he bestows the requisite time and pains. Cowper says, a poet should never tire of correcting his own works. We recommend this truism to Mr. Southey's notice.

Of the monodramas, Ximalpoca pleased us most it was probably intended for an episode to Madoc, and not being of convenient insertion, was published apart; it would not have disparaged that truly great and fine poem. We suspect some songs of the Indians to have a similar origin..

The Love Elegies of Abel Shufflebottom are excellent, especially the fourth: few heroi-comic poems have been composed with equal felicity.

The sonnets, the anomalies, the miscellanies, the eclogues, and the inscriptions, comprize good pieces; but there is alloy enough among them to make the ore pass for a specimen of less than its real value.