Oh, stay your bloody hands! remorseless monsters, hold!" p. 292. The usuper Richard is thus spoken of: "With crowned head, and ermin'd robe, Dark scowl, and halting step, the same, That symbol of his soul, the grizzly arctic beast!" p. 293. We are not aware why Miss Holford calls the boar (the crest of Gloster, in allusion to which Lady Anne calls him 'hedgehog') the grizzly arctic beast. We are glad to turn from visions of horror, to the refreshing scene of chaste endearment, in which Edward pledges to Geraldine the vow of constancy, and the tenderness of the maiden glows through the modest awe which fears to be matched with a king's son. The lovers are surprised by a storm, and seek shelter in the cell of a hermit. With amazement the prince finds in the meek and lowly tenant of that cell, his father and his king!-The persecuted Henry blesses the union of Edward and Geraldine; and they depart from his retreat. Edmund, Rudolph, and Sir Gerald, return to urge the queen to leave the cottage, and throw herself on the protection of her friends. The Lancastrian party assume each a disguise, and depart on their route. The eighth canto, the longest and most elaborate in the poem, recapitulates all the leading events in the calamitous contentions of the Houses of York and Lancaster; and shews us Margaret and her son at the court of France, waited on by an embassy from the king-making Warwick, to propose an alliance between Edward and his daughter. The conflicting feelings of the prince, divided between a sense of duty to his people and a deep unchangeable passion for the lovely Geraldine; the ambitious scorn with which Margaret treats the remonstrances of his affection; and the generous disinterestedness of Geraldine, who gives up the world, and retires to a convent for his sake; are firmly depicted, and give great interest to this portion of the poem. The ninth canto relates the cold unwilling nuptials of Edward and the fair Nevil; and soon brings us to all the pomp and circumstance of war-that most cruel of wars, waged in the heart of a divided nation. The battle of Tewkesbury, fatal to the Lancastrian cause, and succeeded by the murder of the unfortunate Prince Edward, forms the subject of the tenth and last canto, It concludes with the curse of Margaret on the murderers of her son. "Monsters! A mother's curse lie strong For ever in your midnight dream And ev'ry unstrung limb with horror's palsy shake!" P. 470. The ordinary defect of tragedies and epic poems, which are almost invariably accused of falling off in spirit and interest, towards the conclusion, cannot be objected to this animated and masterly performance; the only consider able fault in which is, the occurrence of some defective rhymes, and occasional traits of bad taste, which disfigure some of the finest passages. 297. ART. X.-Bertram; a Poetical Tale. In Four Cantos. By Sir EGERTON BRYDGES, Bart. K.J. M.P. Second Edition. London. Longman and Co. 1816. 12mo. pp. 86. 5s. THE first edition of this poem, issuing from the author's private press, and restricted to a small number of copies, was but little known to the public. The present is, however, likely to be more widely diffused; and we re gard every thing that proceeds from the pen of Sir Egerton Brydges as worthy of a certain degree of consideration and respect, however his genius may be tinctured by the peculi arity of thought and morbid sensibility of feeling, which have been continually called forth in his life, during a chain of events sufficiently harassing in themselves to rouse the choler of the mildest and the resentment of the most forgiv ing. Sir Egerton Brydges must be well known to most of our readers, as a claimant of the Chandos peerage; and a claim which occupied the attention of the most able judges for several years, and was at last set aside rather from the patience of the inquirers into it being exhausted, than from any new light being thrown upon the subject, may reasonably be supposed to have impressed its justice on the mind of him who viewed it through the flattering medium of his wishes, so as to leave a strong sense of injury, when forcibly wrested from him, even to the exclusion of all future hope. Acute pressure on a single nerve will cause the whole frame to vibrate with the most painful emotion whenever the diseased part is put in action. So Sir Egerton Brydges, like the knight of La Mancha, though courteous, learned and discreet, when his peculiar notions are suffered to lie at rest, becomes furious and ungovernable at the very mention of certain names, which rouse his spirit of reformation as effectually as Don Quixote felt himself moved by the Moorish puppets to rise in defence of the peerless Melisendra. When viewed as extracting sweets from the stores of old English literature, as a bee does from flowers-not piling up rubbish, like some of our fashionable Biblio-maniacs;-as a genealogist, illustrating the barrenness of mere descents with the vivacity of personal anecdote and the interest of historical fact; as an observer of nature, the acuteness of whose remarks is heightened by exquisite delicacy of feeling; Sir Egerton Brydges appears to peculiar advantage: but name a contractor, a nabob, a lawyer, or any other character which, according to his idea, forms one of the pests and disgraces of society, and instantly starting from the quiet retirement of literary leisure-throwing aside the contemplative garb in which his rational reveries had wrapped him, he mounts his steed, couches his lance, and rushes forth, to rid the world of the base caitiffs, who, as he thinks, incessantly watch to murder his fame, his fortune, and his happiness. His novels, though written with considerable elegance of expression, and energy of feeling, are little more than a detail of his own wrongs; his poetry is full of allusions to them; and even his criticisms partake of that bias which his mind has received from the peculiarities of his circumstances. The occasional starts of genius, however, ought to be patiently borne with, even when arising from causes much less apparent, by those who are admitted to regale themselves with its fruits. We may compassionate the disappointments of our author; with their effects we have nothing to do, but to excuse them: and to shew that even the wreck of such a mind as his will retain value in the eyes of the reflecting, we shall proceed to lay before our readers some of his remarks upon the character and end of poetry from his Preface to Bertram; which, if we may be allowed so to speak of prose, is the most poetical part of the whole performance. "The character of genuine poetry is that of an art at once the most elevating and the most instructive; of an art which at the same moment lays open the noblest emotions of the bosom, and the most sublime conceptions of the understanding; which embodies the ideal part of our na ture, and arrays the spiritual world in broad light before us; which illus. trates that mysterious union of matter and mind, of corporeal imagery with intellectual sentiment, which forms all the glory, and only high enjoy. ment of human existence." "To describe human nature in any of its most interesting shapes, struggling with virtuous passion, and bearing up with unbending though deeply afflicted heroism against unmerited misfortunes; to catch the colours which its mental suffering gives to the surrounding scenery, and to develope and depict the train of thought which is drawn forth in association with that scenery, is an employment as little unworthy of age as of youth. "There are certain situations of character, passion, and imagery, which the human mind, if well endowed and well cultivated, always loves to contemplate; and whence it learns a lesson not only full of delight, but fertile in amelioration; calculated, as Pope beautifully says, "To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, Sir Egerton proceeds, in an eloquent strain, to analyse the various kinds of poetry to which affected taste and perverted judgment have of late given rise; and contrasts them with those genuine feelings and sympathies, which, disclaiming unnatural novelties of expression, are contented to excite an interest in the reader, by the force of the passions and affections which they describe. He then enlarges more immediately upon the subject of his own poem; which, he informs us first flashed upon him on a wet day in August, 1814, when he was far otherwise employed. The first hundred lines appear to have been poured out with a facility equal to that of Dryden, whom Sir E. professes to take for his model. The poetic fit lasted pretty strongly for some days; but it gradually slackened, and the poem was at last finished, after a long interval, with that languor and reluctance which too often leave imperfect the performances of such authors as can cease to write at the very moment when the employment ceases to give pleasure. Sir Egerton himself regrets the waste of long and precious years in desultory employment, the casual fruits of starts of fancy, or the idle industry of mere compilation. There are necessities which are wholesome in their severity. Had he been under their influence, he would not have shrunk from the dread of public criticism, so far as to confine his own labours to little more than a revisal of the labours of others, after the publication of his first original work, in a small volume of poems, in 1785. We must now proceed to examine the merits of Bertram; and having already expressed our respect for the genius of its author, he will, we hope, forgive us for saying, that, in the production before us there are fewer marks of it than in any other of his performances. Like all Sir Egerton's heroes, Bertram is wonderfully melancholy; he seems, indeed, to think, with one of Ben Jonson's characters, "it is most gentlemanly to be melancholy;" for in all his novels this mark of distinction occurs. Arthur Fitzalbini, Le Forrester, and the lover of Mary de Clifford, are all sad alike, and maintain a most inflexible gravity of deportment. This Mr. Bertram, however, is described as silent and pensive from his childhood; which very naturally gives rise to a suspicion that he is a stupid fellow. The dull are often vain; and we are accordingly told that under this reserve and gloom lurked a passion for distinction, which he strives to obtain by keeping open house for all who choose to profit by his ostentatious |