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"Or cons his murm'ring task beneath her care,
"Or lisps with holy look his ev'ning prayer,
"Or gazing, mutely pensive, sits to hear
"The mournful ballad warbled in his ear;
"How fondly looks admiring Hope the while,
"At every artless tear, and every smile!

The maniac is pictured, wildly expecting the return of a lover, by whose death her reason has been snatch'd from her:

"Oft when yon moon has climb'd the midnight sky,
"And the lone sea-bird wakes its wildest cry,
"Pil'd on the steep, her blazing faggots burn,
"To hail the bark that never can return;
"And still she waits, but scarce forbears to weep,
"That constant love can linger on the deep."

Surely nothing can be more pathetic than the sensation of this poor girl, lamenting that her lover lingers, and yet even in her deepest grief, prevented, by that very madness which his death has caused, from suspecting that he will return to her no more!

The African chief in slavery is depicted with infinite force of feeling:

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"Faint, bleeding, bound, he weeps the night away;
"And, when the sea-wind wafts the dewless day,
"Starts, with a bursting heart, for evermore
"To curse the sun that lights their guilty shore!"

The following lines explain themselves:

"In joyous youth, what soul hath never known
"Thought, feeling, taste, harmonious to its own?
"Who hath not paus'd while Beauty's pensive eye
"Ask'd from his heart the homage of a sigh?
"Who hath not own'd, with rapture-smitten frame,
"The power of grace, the magic of a name?

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"There be, perhaps, who barren hearts avow," &c.

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"But triumph not, ye peace-enamour'd few,

"Fire, Nature, Genius, never dwelt with you!
"For you no fancy consecrates the scene

"Where rapture utter'd vows, and wept between!"

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"No; the wild bliss of Nature needs alloy,
" And fear and sorrow fan the fire of joy!"

An evening walk is thus poetically conceived:

"The moon is up-the watch-tow'r dimly burns-..
"And down the vale his sober step returns;
"But pauses oft, as winding rocks convey
"The still, sweet, fall of music far away;
"And oft he lingers from his home a while,
"To watch the dying notes!-and start, and smile!".

These extracts have probably conveyed some idea of Mr. Campbell's powers for the poetry of pathos and feeling. The brilliance and variety of his imagination will perhaps appear, from this sketch of a poet contemplating nature:

"There shall he love, when genial morn appears,
"Like pensive beauty smiling in her tears,
"To watch the bright'ning roses of the sky,
"And muse on nature with a poet's eye!-
"And when the sun's last splendour lights the deep,
"The woods, and waves, and murm'ring winds asleep;
"When fairy harps th' Hesperian planet hail,
"And the lone cuckoo sighs along the vale,
"His path shall be," &c.

There is not less splendour in the apostrophe to Hope:

"Angel of life; thy glittering wings explore
"Earth's loneliest bounds, and ocean's wildest shore.
"Lo; to the wint'ry winds the pilot yields
"His bark, careering o'er unfathom'd fields ;
"Now on Atlantic waves he rides afar,
"Where Andes, giant of the western star,
"With meteor-standard to the winds unfurl'd,
"Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world.

"Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles,
"On Behring's rocks, or Greenland's naked isles;
" Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow,
"From wastes that slumber in eternal snow;
"And waft, across the wave's tumultuous roar,
"The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore.

Mr. Campbell is admirable in the description of external nature also; his descriptions have generally the benefit of association with a sentiment :

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suddenly.

Few verses have ever been written, less natural or agreeable, than the two former of the three following lines :

"Yet seems it, e'en while life's last pulses run,
"A sweetness in the cup of death to be,
"Lord of my bosom's love! to die beholding thee!"

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Part III. Stanzas 28, 29, 30, 31. p. 65, 66, 67..

And with these the speech concludes.

Perhaps it will be thought by those who wish to be poets at a small expence, that these little awkwardnesses and inversions are of no importance, so the feeling be but natural. It must be owned that awkwardness and inversion have precedent in their favour; but reason can never be with them: for it is obvious that, in order to make the representation of nature complete in every respect, the expression should be natural as well as the idea: and who will maintain that inversion is natural? Which of us, in expressing an ardent feeling, expresses it by transposing his words, and involving his sentences? Poetry, indeed, is privileged to step a little way beyond ordinary nature, when the licence can add fascination, or grandeur, or grace, or in any way heighten the general effect : but is any one of these desireable ends attained by the departures from nature, which are called inversions ?--Certainly not. Then assuredly inversions are quite inexcusable. Versification is the medium through which poetry is perceived: and if the medium be ruffled and turbid, every object will come distorted to the perception.

In all works of art, though the design is the most material consideration, yet a natural and skilful expression is indispensably requisite to success: and the reason why so few of the numerous candidates for fame arrive at any very great eminence, is that so few possess a union of the creative and executive faculties.

Mr. Campbell, in some passages of his work, has inverted so unmercifully, as to become almost unintelligible; and though the fault does not every where amount to inextricable perplexity, yet the versification is so unceasingly pinched and fettered, that the diction of the whole poem assumes a character at once hard and flat, clumsy and weak. In short, the phraseology is as obscure and ungraceful as the narrative. The reader will be able to form a tolerably fair notion of these defects, by a few passages which we have selected from a numerous series.

Albert is described as a widower with his infant daughter. "Alov'd bequest and I may half impart"To them that feel the strong paternal tie, "How like a new existence to his heart "Uprose that living flow'r beneath his eye, "Dear as she was, from cherub infancy, "From hours when she would round his garden play, "To time when as the rip'ning years went by, "Her lovely mind would culture well repay,

" And more engaging grew from pleasing day to day."

Part I. Stanza 11. p. 12.

Albert apostrophizes the deceased mother of Waldegrave:

"And Julia! when thou wert like Gertrude now,
"Can I forget thee, favourite child of yore?
"Or thought I, in thy father's house when thou
"Wert lightest-hearted on his festive floor,
"And first of all his hospitable door,
"To meet and kiss me at my journey's end?
" But where was I, when Waldegrave was no more ?
"And thou didst, pale, thy gentle head extend,
"In woes, that e'en the tribe of desarts was thy friend!"
Part I. Stanza 22. p. 19, & 20.

The scenery of Wyoming is delineated :

"But high, in amphitheatre above,

" His arms the everlasting aloes threw;
"Breath'd but an air of heav'n, and all the grove

"As if with instinct living spirit grew,

"Rolling its verdant gulphs of every hue."

The poet blesses his happy groupe :

Part II. Stanza 10. p. 33.

"Roll on, ye days of raptur'd influence, shine!

"Nor blind with ecstasy's celestial fire,

"Shall love behold the spark of earth-born time expire."

Part III. Stanza 1. p. 47. "And, mark the wretch, whose wanderings never knew "The wor'd's regard, that soothes, though half untrue, "Whose erring heart the lash of sorrow bore, "But found not pity when it err'd no more.

"Ev'n he, at evening, should he chance to stray,
"Down by the hamlet's hawthorn-scented way,
"Where, round the col's romantic glade are seen
"The blossom'd beanfield, and the sloping green,
"Leans o'er its humble gate, and thinks the while
"Oh! that for me some home like this would smile,
"Some hamlet shade, to yield my sickly form,
"Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm!

Again:

"Let winter come! let polar spirits sweep
"The dark'ning world, and tempest-troubled deep!
"Though boundless snows the wither'd heath deform,
"And the dim sun scarce wanders through the storm;
"Yet shall the smile of social love repay,
"With mental light, the melancholy day!
"And, when its short and sullen noon is o'er,
"The ice-chain'd waters slumbering on the shore,
"How bright the faggots in his little hall
"Blaze on the hearth, and warm the pictur'd wall!

The next merit that shall be instanced, is the fascination with which Mr. Campbell has clothed the philosophy of his poem. In expatiating on the comparative blessings of Wisdom and Hope, he exclaims :

"Can Wisdom lend, with all her heav'nly power,
"The pledge of joy's anticipated hour ?
"Ah, no! she darkly sees the fate of man-
"Her dim horizon bounded to a span;
"Or if she hold an image to the view,
"'Tis Nature pictur'd too severely true."

This last couplet is beyond praise.

Of the accidental gales that may ruffle the serenity of connubial love, he thus delightfully expresses himself :

"Though thy wild heart some hapless hour may miss
"The peaceful tenor of unvaried bliss,
" (For love pursues an ever devious race,

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