few words, a satisfactory answer might perhaps be given by saying, that Doctor Young's two volumes, intitled A Course of Lectures, &c. form rather a collection of that author's different works, than a uniform or homogeneous performance; nor can it be denied, that the execution of the different parts exhibits a considerable inequality. But taking it altogether, it must undoubtedly be considered as being a very ample, an elaborate, an accurate, and a most useful, repository of Natural Philosophy in its present state, as well as of several collateral branches of knowledge.

POEMS, NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED. BY THE REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.-12mo. pp. 197. Cadell and Davies, London. 1809.

IT is generally believed, that Fashion is most despotic in those countries, where the greatest progress has been made towards civilization and refinement. This is not the case. In the wilds of Africa, on the frozen mountains of Lapland, over those vast and solitary plains, where the Arab and Tartar roam, in those regions where the human mind dozes under the narcotic influence of Mohammedan power, wherever, indeed, barbarism and ignorance prevail, Fashion reigns with absolute dominion; and the laws, which she established some thousand years ago, are still observed with religious reverence. The slightest attempt at innovation is regarded with horror, and the abolition or alteration of the most trivial custom, which Fashion has consecrated, might cause the revo lution of empires. But as the light of reason becomes diffused, and arts and sciences begin to be cultivated, the sanctity of peculiar modes, to which antiquity had imparted an appearance of inviolability, is gradually invaded; till at length

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the modes themselves fall into contempt or oblivion. Fashion then gives place to Variety. Whatever may be employed for the use, the comfort, or the amusement of man, is subjected to eternal change of form and nature, as caprice, the desire of improvement, or the mere love of novelty may operate: and in the end, where refinement is carried to excess, things are esteemed not for their intrinsic excellence or beauty, but as they may be strange or novel.

Nor is the influence of this passion for novelty, confined to the mere modification of matter, but extends to the operations of the mind. The wing of Fancy grows weary in the eccentric flights, which it makes through unexplored regions in quest of objects, that may gratify the sickly taste of Variety: and the fields of Poesy are cultivated not according to the best fashion, but the newest whim: crop follows crop in a wild, irregular, and fantastic succession; a strange mixture of flowers and weeds, so intimately blended and entangled as mutually to support and shade each other.

It has fared with Poetry, indeed, much in the same way that it has with Landscape-gardening, as it is called. When the rude form of Nature first began to be subjected to cultivation, man was too intent on satisfying his immediate wants, to be studious of ornament, or anxious after beauty: but as soon as his necessities were supplied, (at least as soon as they were supplied so easily as to allow any respite from labour,) the activity of his mind was employed in devising modes of improvement and embellishment, and in inventing means of adding grace to utility. A considerable time must necessarily have elapsed, before any just principles of taste could have been established; but it is not probable, that at first any very great deviations would be made from the primitive simplicity of Nature: whatever defects there might be, they would be the defects of poverty, and not of superfluity: fastidious delicacy might be displeased at the plainness or scantiness of the garb, but would not be disgusted by the incumbrance of overloaded and incongruous ornament. There is, however, every reason to suppose, that by the natural tendency of the human mind to prefer that which is right, when not warped by any powerful motive to lean to that which is wrong, a just perception of propriety and beauty must have prevailed, till the love of novelty exchanged beauty for deformity; and gave birth to all those monstrous productions, which were as much admired in their own time, as they are ridiculed in the present.-The gloomy rectilinear avenue; the sombre yew, tortured into walls and columns, and a thousand extravagant and frightful forms,

Gorgons and hydras and chimæras dire;

the fountains with their clumsy tritons and porpoise-like naiads; and indeed the whole tribe of pagan deities, in lead or bronze; the trim parterre, formal, hard, and dry, cut and divided into all possible forms, with as much minuteness and precision, as if they were intended for diagrams to illustrate geometrical problems; the trumpery of Chinese temples and bridges; and the more modern barbarisms of clumps and knolls, and belts, and tiresome serpentines: all of these as they deviate more or less from the direct path of simplicity and nature, are not proofs that the right way was not previously known, but that it was wilfully left, in search of variety: for the right way was plain and open, and straight forward, and all those, who have first wandered from it, have been compelled to make paths for themselves, with great labour and difficulty, through obstructions which opposed them at every step, and thickened as they proceeded.

If the various changes which at different periods have taken place in the style or fashion of Poetry are considered, they will be found to have occurred nearly in the same order, and indeed to have accompanied these revolutions in Landscapegardening: and the cause of this is obvious; both are subjects of taste; and as that varies from correctness to formality, from formality to meanness, and from meanness to extravagance, both must be equally affected. But the present state of these arts, while it shews their intimate analogy, will demonstrate how little the principles of taste are even now understood or cultivated, or at least will prove what was said above, and what cannot be too often repeated, nor too much deprecated, that though the charms of beauty, grace, and propriety, may be most powerfully felt and acknowledged, they are constantly sacrificed, without remorse, to variety. So that while one party of poets and landscape-gardeners, from an excessive admiration of simplicity and picturesqueness, are stripping Nature bare, or covering her with the coarse rags, which she had worn in her days of poverty, and had long since thrown aside; another set are tricking her out in all the fantastic gewgaws that capricious fancy can invent, and hiding her completely under a load of meretricious ornaments. These may be called Nature's man-milliners; for, as if they were insensible to her own beauties, they are only attentive to plait her frills, and dispose her drapery. Both these parties, however, cannot be right: it is certain, indeed, that prosecuting their systems to extremes, both are wrong; though not in an equal degree, since the nakedness of Nature is less offensive than the distortions of Art. But it is evident that though the effects are so diametrically opposite, they are produced by the same cause, an insatiate passion for variety.

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Now though the makers of poems are very apt occasionally to affect a good deal of carelessness for the opinion of their contemporaries, and talk of reserving their beauties for the admiration of other times, this is only to be understood as poetical coquetry: they understand very well the value of popular favour, and practise every art to obtain it. Instead, therefore, of endeavouring to direct the public taste, which it is their business to do, they study its prevailing tendency only in order to fashion their works accordingly: they are afraid to climb against the wheel, and seek eminence by arresting its progress; they think it easier to reach the summit by yielding to its motion, and suffering themselves to be raised by it; and in this conclusion perhaps they are right, but it is certain that the next rotation precipitates them in the dust.

Public opinion, indeed, may be said to be the market of poetry, and those therefore, who have wares to dispose of, will study its fluctuations; and if they have not capital to command or regulate them, they will be careful to manufacture such articles only as are most in request, and fetch the best prices. Some dashing speculators, by the introduction of a novel manufacture, may obtain a temporary monopoly, but as soon as the novelty ceases, the trade becomes open again. There must, however, be in this, as in all other merchandize, wholesale dealers, who traffic only in one particular branch, and retailers who keep as it were a chandler's shop of poetry; and these, if they do nothing to improve the public taste, at least do nothing to corrupt it, since they only follow in a path already made for them by hardier adventurers.

It may be thought perhaps, that these observations are rather applicable to the general state of Poetry, than to the work of any single writer: but it is presumed that on a nearer view of the productions of Mr. Bowles, they will not be found altogether out of place, or superfluous: since there is scarcely any species of poetry, which he has not attempted, nor any of the modes which others have rendered fashionable for the day, that he has not partly adopted. He has composed Sonnets, Elegies, and Monodies, Odes, Ballads, Descriptive Poems, and non-descripts of all sorts and sizes, from five pages to five books; and has by turns been plaintive, incomprehensible, simple, gawdy, and extravagant. He does not indeed fall a whimpering over a fading rose, nor become hysterically lyrical at the sight of an old woman in a red cloak; neither does he go quite so far as to manufacture the clouds into gauze, nor, when he leaps upon his poetical hobby-horse, prac