19. "Domingo comes." Domingo Williams, Esq. 20. To dispel the real and imaginary ills of life 10. The celebrity of the Prince Regent's Punch whiskey was given to mankind, by the same Providence that gave White-top and Black-top to cause 11. "The beastly king," i. e. the king of beasts-them. "My bane, my antidote, are both before me." or British lion. The passage is merely emblematic, and contains no personal allusion whatever. 12. "Quenched in thick fumes" &c. Gray has

[The following should have been printed some months since; but poetry like this, can never be unseasonable.]

show that it ought to consider original authors only as tools or materials for the reviewer, and to estimate them accordingly. This is just what we mean to do in a very capital essay now receiving its last polish, "The Westminster Review is henceforth to be and to be published-some time or other. called the Antediluvian Review. Its former titles At present we shall do no more than just of the Benthamite and the Radical, have sunk away to tell our readers what is doing abroad in into this matchlessly appropriate cognomen. Its this respect; because we cannot fail thus readers were, it must be owned, at first rather surto convince every honest man, that review- But the secret has at length been suffered to tran prised at the obsoleteness of the several topics. ers &c. are multiplying not only faster than spire. As the purpose of the work is reform in all books, but so much faster, that the review- its branches, church and state, book and mankind; ers are actually compelled to ransack "the and as no reform is worth a straw which does not vasty void of by-gone things" for subjects. begin at the root, the Antediluvian Review has deOf periodicals actually established we shall and so as not to set the laughers against it, all at termined to begin at the beginning; but cautiously, give no list, as we have not many columns once. Accordingly the first number has treated of to spare; of those just starting in our own no subject much beyond fifty years of age; and has land, we shall be very particularly silent; lucubrated on the Bullion question, Public Educa not caring to tell those who may not think tion, Malthus, and the first numbers of the Edinso well of the United States Literary Ga-burgh and Quarterly Reviews." This is all as it should be. The present century is fairly excluded, zette as we do, what a wide variety they and that is enough for a first number. But the secmay select from. In England divers small ond is to be more antique and fearless; and to conthings are perpetually struggling to be, but tain articles on the Character of Marlborough ; on since this year came in, at least five new the Revolution of 1688, and as a little additional journals of much magnitude and pretension The work is then to be considered as having fairly development, a detail of the War of the Roses. have been proposed or begun. There is the declared itself, and it is thenceforth to wanton in UNIVERSAL REVIEW, OR CHRONICLE OF THE the wilderness of the dark ages, to give a train of HISTORY OF ALL NATIONS. Of this we only dissertations on the discovery of the Pandects; the know that it was to begin in March, and to be Bulls of Innocent III.; the controversy of Duns published every two months. The Prospec- Scotus; the private correspondence and familiar tus declares all the established periodicals the rise of the Aristotelians, &c. &c. philosophy of St Dominic; the fall of the Gnostics; to be very poor things indeed; and that the writers in this are to be very able, very impartial, very constitutional, and particularly disposed to profit by the fact, that "on the continent a new and brilliant period has opened, that almost resembles the fifteenth The CAMBRIDGE QUARTERLY REVIEW is century, in the suddenness, masculine strength, and original splendour of its in- announced, to appear in March. The proSOME great English engineer-no matter tellectual exertion." Then a new series of prietors profess to seek no new plan, but to who-was called before the House of Com- the LITERARY MUSEUM is announced; we do better in the old way than any other. mons, to state facts touching canals, &c. are promised-to simplify the prospectus as We learn from the Prospectus that they are Perhaps he meant to get the job of building far as possible-that the new work shall be graduates of Cambridge, disposed to pay one; be that as it may, he declared that ca- a prompt, accurate, and universal Review particular attention to university matters, nals were of more use than any one thought and Register of Literature and all the Arts wholly unconnected with any similar underthem or has found them since. A member and Sciences-which is certainly quite prom-throne," and, as we suppose, to put down the taking, hoping to support "the altar and the of the Commons, a little amazed at his trot- ise enough. It is published in London every Westminster Review. ting his hobby so violently, uttered a "Pray, Saturday. KNIGHT'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE Sir, if canals are thus omnipotent of good, is fairly under way. We have seen a few are not navigable rivers of some use?" numbers of it, and think it almost better than "Certainly, Sir; they serve to feed naviga- nothing at all,-as mere matter of amuseble canals." This is quite a good joke, rather ment. It appears to be a general Magaold, but not very, and we make a very in-zine of Belles Lettres. But the great gun of genious and felicitous application of it, in the new periodicals, is the WESTMINSTER remarking, that rivers held about the same REVIEW; of which the first number has just relation to canals in our engineer's opin- reached us. Many of the articles are very ion, that original works bear to reviews, able, and it professes to do great things. in the taste of the reading public. In fact, We take it to be a thorough radical in its the only reason why we undertook this Ga- character. Doubtless our readers know, zette, was our discovery that the world were that every body in England is either a tory, rapidly getting convinced of the total use--and wishes every thing, good, bad, and lessness of all books whatever, excepting as they may supply food for reviews, journals, magazines, literary gazettes, &c. &c. &c. This conviction on the part of the world is a proof of growing wisdom, and is moreover likely to be of some service to us. We intend to do what we can to spread and fix it, by showing that it exists; inasmuch as nothing makes people believe a thing, like finding out that others believe it. One way to do this would be to assume that the world always thinks what it should, and then to

THE UNITED STATES LITERARY GAZETTE.

Published on the first and fifteenth day of every month, by Cummings, Hilliard, & Co. No. 1 Cornhill, Boston
VOL. I.

REVIEWS.

Poems. By James G. Percival.

York, 1823. pp. 396.

BOSTON, JUNE 15, 1824.

in our streets and villages, as a new order of animated creation. Our press teems anNew nually with a large amount of original produce, and that of a character not entirely contemptible. At the very time that power-looms and spinning-jennies are start

-Terms, $5 per annum, payable in July.
No. 5.

unavoidable. Our literatures are in some sense common stock; the produce of both countries is brought into one market overt; and whoever goes there to sell, must be prepared for the competition. The reading public is the same to both; and the public erature the land of promise. Our capa- try, we are fabricating a fair proportion, not to make allowances. Men who volunbilities of every sort, have too long been for our age and condition, of good mer- tarily and ambitiously force themselves into the theme of our panegyrists, and as such, chantable poetry, and vendible romance. the high and responsible station of authors, have furnished more laughter than wit to Our productions in other departments of who undertake for hire, either of fame or our enemies. It was long since remarked, literature are neither few, nor unworthy of money, it matters not, to instruct or amuse and then at least, not without a colouring regard. The American imprimatur on the public mind, cannot reasonably comof truth, that we Americans, "homines works of fiction and taste is beginning to plain, if that favour is withheld, where they novi," are forever vaunting the things that be known and respected even in England, have produced neither instruction nor shall be; prophesying what a wonderful as our Waltham cotton stamp is in other amusement. Nor can they reasonably exnation we must become in due process of parts of the world. It is no longer neces- pect that the public will be at great pains time; and resting a huge fabric of national sary for us to build upon futurity, or to go to ascertain the cause of the failure. It is vanity on the shadowy foundation of a na- back to the land of our ancestors in elder enough that they have failed to do that, tional hereafter. The retort is at least a fair days, asserting a claim to literature which which, undone, were better unattempted. one upon those elder nations of the earth, is ours as well as theirs. The day has Upon these principles we ourselves profess who lose the beginnings of their greatness come when we must assert a literature of to judge; and therefore, while we devote in the mists of antiquity, that their pride is our own, not vauntingly, nor yet fearfully, our pages chiefly to American literature, founded, not upon what they are, but upon but with that modest confidence which bewe shall esteem it no part of our duty to what their ancestors have been. The boast comes the ingenuous youth who is conscious praise it because it is American. In critiof a son in his father's glory, or of a father of deserving well at the hands of a master, cism we know no country, but the great rein the promise of his son, are indeed equal whom he does not pretend to have rivalled, public of letters. "Tros Tyriusve mihi ly unbecoming in private life; and we far less surpassed We do indeed most nullo discrimine agetur." think them both poor subjects of national solemnly protest against this perpetual comexultation. For our part, we are well parison between English and American content that our own country shall be tried, literatures. We protest against the folly not by the future, or the past, but as she is, of it on our part-we protest against the provided she be tried at the common law, injustice of it on hers. Apart from all by a jury of her peers; and we will not other considerations, it is placing the imobject, that even her rivals and exemplars petus of a few prosperous years in compebe her judges, if her efforts be fairly meas- tition with that acquired by as many cenured with her means. We will not say that turies of progressive action. Allow all her infant institutions have in a few short that should be allowed, and it is not little, years accumulated such store of learning as for the laws, language, religion, civil libercumbers the monastic shelves of European ty, domestic and public habits, that we have academies; that her young luxury has derived from England, and enjoy in combrought into being such a profusion of mon with her sons and daughters of the chef-d'œuvres in marble or canvass, as may present day, and still the literatures of the challenge the Vatican or the Louvre; or ancient and the youthful nation are not that her fast growing, but not yet over- fit subjects of comparison;-it is a very pro-him not count upon that seven-fold shield as grown, fortunes have enabled her to main-saic sort of "magna componere parvis." tain at her frugal board such a crowd of Ages may elapse before the literatures of poor poets, and magnificent reviewers, as the two countries, viewed en masse, will are marshalled under the golden banners of nobility and regal wealth. The crumbs which fall from our rich men's tables are not yet so plentiful as to have made literary idlers (for such they are to those who mingle in the busy scenes of active life) a numerous and distinct class of our community. But still, in literature and the arts, we have done well, and are daily doing better. Our artists who were famous abroad, can now live at home. It becomes more difficult to number our literary devotees, of whom a few years since some one or two stragglers were looked upon as miracles. Professed authors are no longer pointed at

THIS Volume of native poetry is a new earn est that America is not always to be in lit-ing into operation in all parts of our coun-never makes allowances. The public ought

stand upon equal footing. Still, individual
authors in either country must at all times
be judged by the same critical standard;
and so far as that standard is derived from
the usages of English writers, so far are
our authors liable, and justly liable, to the
odious law of comparison. True, that with
England's superior mass of literature, her
greater number of candidates for literary
fame, by reason of the greater inducements
that are held out to them, there are, and
must be of necessity, a larger number of
first rate men; so that the comparison will
for a long time run to the disadvantage of
our authors. Still the evil, if it be one, is

It is high time we turn to our author, who will not fear judgment on these principles. We hear he is young; but we shall allow nothing for his youth, since he is an author, and authors, like ladies, are always of a certain age; nor should we mention the circumstance, but as a cause of congratulation to him and to ourselves, for the greater chance that remains to him to do better things than he has yet done. He is an American, but we have already said we bestow no commendation for that cause. Indeed why should we, since it is no merit of his? He has published a book of near four hundred pages in rhyme. Oh that mine enemy had written half the number! Let

a protection against any peril of authorship, unless it be the peril of being read. It is indeed "the very head and front of his offending." A man who writes a book of four hundred pages in these days, and that poetry too, should have made up his mind to condemnation beforehand. It is too much to expect, that either our ladies or our critics, whose work tables and desks are already crowded with new Waverly novels, new cantos of Don Juan, and new Quarterly and Edinburgh and North American Reviews (those admirable time-saving condensers of reading), besides all the other new things under the sun, and these coming upon them so much faster than even the most praise-worthy diligents among us either desire or deserve; it is too much to

hands?

is a simple story of a young man of wealthy | Tossed, and went back along her polished sides,
parentage, and a young woman whose only And floated off, bounding the rushing wake,
surviving parent lived in obscurity, who fall That seemed to pour in torrents from her stern.
in love with each other at church. The
great ones will not hear to the match; and,
as usual under such circumstances, pre-
scribe the grand tour. The son goes into for-
eign parts, and, after a long absence, his
mistress one day sees the signal agreed up
on
on between them, at the mast-head of a
ship entering the bay; but a sudden storm
arises; the vessel is totally wrecked; she
finds the corpse of her true love on the
shore, embraces it, and dies; and thus, of
course,

The wind still freshened, and the sails were stretch-
ed,
Till the yards cracked. She bent before its force,
And dipped her lee-side low beneath the waves.
Straight out she went to sea, as when a hawk
Darts on a dove, and with a motionless wing
Their dark walls to the waters, and the hills
Cuts the light yielding air. The mountains dipped
Scarce reared their green tops o'er them."

The next poem, "Prometheus," is in two
cantos, occupying a hundred and twenty
pages. We have seen it highly praised,
and regret that we cannot join in the voice
of unqualified commendation; our reason
is a very simple one, and will doubtless be
more gratifying to the author than any oth-
er we could give, since he will of course
set it down to our own particular stupidi-
ty;-it is, that we cannot fully understand"
We certainly spared no reasonable
it.
We gave it a first and a
pains to do so.
second perusal, not without care. Still un-
daunted, we essayed a third time, and read
on till we came to the passage which be-
gins,

"Much study is a weariness-so said
The sage of sages, and the aching eye,
The pallid cheek, the trembling frame, the head
Throbbing, &c.

Attest his truth."

expect that such pampered gentry can find stomach to digest, or heart to praise, a volume of these dimensions. If the name in the title-page be one unknown to fame, we need look no farther. But if it be one of those favourites of fortune who supply tea-talk "for the nonce," and whom not to know were to argue ourselves unknown, how deeply should such an one, before he publishes four hundred pages of rhyme, ponder on the serious inconvenience he is about to occasion to so many honest gentlefolks, who are bound by the laws of honor to expend much precious time and invaluable labour in reading at least one page in ten, because they are bound by the laws of fashion to say They both were buried, where they first had met, that they have read him. Wherefore Beneath one stone, and they were wept by all." should such a man expect mercy at literary Upon this slender and common-place outNotwithstanding all this, we have really line is spread a great deal of beauty, chiefread Mr Percival's Poems ourselves quite ly of the descriptive kind. The piece through, and seriously advise all other lov- opens poetically, in mediis rebus, with a ers of the muse, who have a rational re pretty picture of the deserted mistress sitgard for their own entertainment, to do the ting by the flag-staff, on a towering cliff like. Mr Percival certainly exhibits poet-near her father's cottage, which looked out ical powers very far above the ordinary upon the ocean, where she hourly watched sail after sail for the long expected signal. range. He possesses in an eminent degree that quality, without which a poet cannot Her melancholy visage and wasted form be, a keen perception of natural beauty ;furnish the author with an apology for tella quality which includes both the sensibili-ing us the story of her love; after which, ty of the poet, and the taste of the mere the ship that bears her lover is seen in the artist. The sensibility may exist without offing, and the the catastrophe follows which Being much struck with this truth of the the taste, and the reader will be shocked concludes the tale. As a specimen of our 66 sage of sages," and fully coinciding with as often as he is delighted. The taste may author's powers, and his style of versifica-him in opinion, we shut the book. Poetry inexist without the sensibility, and the reader tion, we cannot do better perhaps than to deed wants its essence if it fail to excite or will at best be pleased with a cold, inani-select his descriptions of the ship which is amuse, and the mind cannot well be excitmate beauty which smiles him to sleep. about to bear the lover away, before he is ed or amused with that which conveys to it Where the two coexist in happy union, yet on board, and afterwards while she is no definite idea. We would not be undertheir joint production cannot but touch the under full sail. stood to say that no ideas are to be collectfeelings and satisfy the judgment, although ed from these pages; but that we cannot it may not reach those bolder flights of distinctly perceive the general scope and poetic fervour, which crowd the imagination design of the poem; it has no unity;-it with things of more than mortal birth, and leaves no distinct impression upon the mind. lead it to riot in its native empyreal realms. We see neither a Gothic ruin, nor a We cannot say that the general character Grecian porch, nor a good habitable house of Mr Percival's poetry, as exhibited in the of brick and mortar; but a confused mass book before us, is of this sublimated cast, of gems and glittering rubbish cumbering although there are passages which betray the earth. The solution of the difficulty much depth of feeling and power of exis, that our author's muse has been foolishpression. It has been said of poetry, that ly trying to fly after the manner of Byron, to possess moderate excellence in the art is and has consequently got lost in the clouds. to want its very essence; as if not to be Poetry in the olden time consisted chiefly beyond all praise were to be wholly unin a sort of personification, or figurative worthy of regard;-and there is as much description of the world without us, and those of truth in this observation as in most genpassions of the human heart which operate most strongly and visibly on human action; eral rules affecting matters of taste. But there are, nevertheless, different walks of but nowadays she is refined into a sort of poetry, which are to be trodden with a difmetaphysical subtilty, exercising her inferent step. We do not look for dithyram- The sun had set, the painted sky and clouds genuity in analyzing the secret workings of bic fury in the song of Melpomene, nor ex-Of brightness, and the stars were thick in heaven. Put off their liveries, the bay its robe the soul, and describing in vague and mys pect to see pastoral softness in the tragic They looked upon the waters, and below tical language the mazy world of feeling buskin. Cowper and Thompson never Another sky swelled out, thick set with stars, within us. When one of Homer's heroes reach the sublimity of Dryden, or the And chequered with light clouds, which from the sits down by the seashore and looks out gloomy grandeur of Byron; yet who will upon the waters, the poet describes them, say they were not poets? So Percival Came flitting o'er the dim-seen hills, and shot dark, stern, and boundless, in such language Like birds across the bay. A distant shade leaves us behind him when he urges his Dimmed the clear sheet-it darkened, and it drew as presents a kind of direct picture to the flight into unknown worlds, but takes us Nearer. The waveless sea was seen to rise mind; but when Byron gazes on the ocean, entirely with him while he is content to In feathery curls, and soon it met the ship, he tells you how he feels about it, and how tread the flowery meads and dark vallies of And a breeze struck her. Quick the floating sails he used to feel about it when he was a little this earth, and mingle in the tender scenes Fresher; the curls were waves; the sails were flection from the dark mirror of his own Rose up and drooped again. The wind came on boy; and the image presented is but a reof domestic life. soul. We do not intend here to enter into a discussion of the respective merits of the

"The sun was setting, and his last rays threw
Bright colours on the clouds that hung around
Over a broad expanse of sheeted gold,
The mountains, dimly rising in the west
On which a ship lay floating. It was calm-
Her sails were set, but yet the dying wind
Scarce wooed them, as they trembled on the yard
With an uncertain motion. She arose,
When on a lake at sunset she uprears
As a swan rises on her gilded wings,
Her form from out the waveless stream and steers
Into the far blue ether-so that ship
Seemed lifted from the waters, and suspended,
Winged with her bright sails, in the silent air.
A voice came from that ship, the voice of joy,
The song of a light heart, and it invoked

The coming of the breeze, to send them forth
Over the rolling ocean."

And again, after he is embarked and the
vessel has got under way.

old and the new schools; but we think it es→sential to the interest of poetry, in either form, that it should present some subject of

sympathy to the reader.

"Day fades, and night grows brighter in her orb,
Which walks the blue air with a queen-like smile,
And seems with a soft gladness to absorb
All the deep blaze, that lit yon rocky pile,

ingenious theory of beauty author of an Where the sun took his farewell glance, the while

traces all our

notions of it to associations with human, or at least spiritual, life and action.

The

He rested on the throne of parting day,
Which is his royal seat ;—as a far isle
Rolling amid the upper deep its way,
bay."

As a loud sound of awe. She passed her hand
Over those quivering lips, that ever grew
Paler and colder, as the only sign

To tell her life still lingered-it went out!
And her heart sank within her, when the last
Weak sigh of life was over, and the room
Seemed like a vaulted sepulchre, so lone
She dared not look around; and the light wind,"

That played among the leaves and flowers that grew
Still freshly at her window, and waved back
In her intense abstraction, seemed the voice
The curtain with a rustling sound, to her,
Of a departed spirit. Then she heard,
At least in fancy heard, a whisper breathe
Close at her ear, and tell her all was done,
And her fond loves were ended. She had watched
Until her love grew manly, and she checked
The tears that came to flow, and nerved her heart
To the last solemn duty. With a hand
That trembled not, she closed the fallen lid,
And pressed the lips, and gave them one long kiss-
Then decently spread over all a shroud;
And sitting with a look of lingering love
Intense in tearless passion, rose at length,
And pressing both her hands upon her brow,
Gave loose to all her gushing grief in showers,
Which, as a fountain sealed till it had swelled
To its last fulness, now gave way and flowed
In a deep stream of sorrow. She grew calm,
And parting back the curtains, looked abroad

wide landscape of smooth lawns and culti-The moon glides on, as glides her shadow on the
vated farms, charms us from the sense of hu-
We regret that our limits will not permit
man comfort it creates rugged and roman-
us to go into a particular analysis of the
tic scenery reminds us of the proud savage
of the wilds, or the strange beings resem-poems which follow. The "Suicide," though
bling man in his spiritual qualities, which in a different metre, has much of the same
The plan
superstition has at some time created; and character with the Prometheus.
the pleasure we derive from poetical de we admit is easily discernible, and we have
scriptions of these scenes, upon the princi a living personage pictured before us; but
ple of the old school, is (like that derived he forms no very distinct image in our
from pictures) in proportion as they suggest minds, and the whole poem consists of his
the scenes themselves, bringing with them vague descriptions of morbid feelings, which
their natural associations, with more or are not portrayed with a very powerful
less distinctness, with more or less truth of pencil, and are far from winding us up to
colouring and outline. And so their stories sympathize with the last desperate act. The
and personages delight us, according as they smaller pieces, which fill up the remainder
more or less resemble the reality of human of the volume, are in general much better
action, and the variety of human charac than the poems from which we have hith-
ter Now all we mean to say of the old erto extracted, and those of them more es- Upon the moonlight loveliness, all sunk

and the new schools is, that it is infinitely
more difficult, and requires a far greater
stretch of ingenuity in the poet, to call
forth the sympathies of his readers in fa-
your of his own secret feelings, which may
be very extravagant and very peculiar,
than by description of life and manners,
and human action, and natural scenery, as
every one sees them about him. And hence
a successful writer of the former class is a
very dangerous subject of imitation. By-
Fon himself, though eminently the poet of
his own heart, is well enough aware of the
necessity of presenting to the mind of his
reader some personage in whose sorrows
(for he has no joys) we are to sympathize;
and while we travel with his lordship over
a great part of the earth, prosing, or rather
poeticizing, at every step about his own
feelings in regard to every thing he sees,
Childe Harold, the stern and melancholy
outcast, wandering from elime to clime,
cheerless and alone, is all the while pictured
in our minds, giving unity to the poem, and
a constant object of interest to our regards.
All this is wanting in the "Prometheus,"
where the poet gives us nothing but vague
and indefinite descriptions of the universe
and himself; so vague and indefinite, that
the poem might almost as well be read by
stanzas backwards as forwards. Yet there
are detached passages, which, considered
by themselves, are full of the most exalted
beauty. The address to the sun, begin-
ning

"Centre of light and energy! thy way
Is through the unknown void; thou hast thy throne
Morning, and evening, and at noon of day,
Far in the blue, untended and alone,"

has an air of majesty throughout, approach-
ing far nearer to sublimity than is usual
with our author, and we regret much that
its length will not permit us to extract it.
We will substitute for it a single stanza
containing much exquisite poetry in its
"little round."

pecially in which our author condescends to In one unbroken silence, save the moan
touch upon the realities of domestic life, well From the lone room of death, or the dull sound
deserve the highest commendation. For Of the slow-moving hearse. The homes of men
instances, we would select "Night Watch-Were now all desolate, and darkness there,
ing," and the Deserted Wife." The former And solitude and silence took their seat
In the deserted streets, as if the wing
of these exhibits such a pure spirit of ten- Of a destroying angel had gone by,
der poetry, that we cannot resist the temp- And blasted all existence, and had changed
nd pay, the busy, and the crowd change
The
tation of giving it to our readers entire.
To one cold, speechless city of the dead!"
This delicious morceau needs no elogium,
for it speaks to the heart.

NIGHT WATCHING.

He was weak,

"She sat beside her lover, and her hand
Rested upon his clay-cold forehead. Death
Was calmly stealing o'er him, and his life
Went out by silent flickerings, when his eye
Woke up from its dim lethargy, and cast
Bright looks of fondness on her.
Too weak to utter all his heart. His eye
How much he felt her kindness, and the love
Was now his only language, and it spake
That sat, when all had fled, beside him. Night
Was far upon its watches, and the voice
Of Nature had no sound. The pure blue sky
Was fair and lovely, and the many stars
That smiled in sweetest summer. She looked out
Looked down in tranquil beauty on an earth
Through the raised window, and the sheeted bay
Lay in a quiet sleep below, and shone
With the pale beam of midnight—air was still,
And the white sail, that o'er the distant stream
Moved with so slow a pace, it seemed at rest,

Fixed in the glassy water, and with care
Shunned the dark den of pestilence, and stole
Fearfully from the tamted gale that breathed
Softly along the crisping wave-that sail
Hung loosely on its yard, and as it flapped,
Caught moving undulations from the light,
And spires, and walls, and roofs, a tint so pale,
That silently came down, and gave the hills,
Death seemed on all the landscape-but so still,
Who would have thought that any thing but peace
And beauty had a dwelling there! The world
Only a few, who lingered faintly on,
Had gone, and life was not within those walls,
Waiting the moment of departure or
Sat tending at their pillows, with a love
So strong it mastered fear-and they were few,
And she was one-and in a lonely house,
Far from all sight and sound of living thing,
She watched the couch of him she loved, and drew
Contagion from the lips that were to her
Still beautiful as roses, though so pale
They seemed like a thin snow curl. All was still,
And even so deeply hushed, the low, faint breath
That trembling gasped away, came through the night

Liberty to Athens," the "Senate of Callimachi," and the "Greek Emigrant's Song," are excellent specimens of the lyric strain; and, to tell the truth, we were not a little glad to find something of the heroic order, by way of relief from the sombre, melancholic tone which usually pervades our author's rhyme. It has been said that we have a fair criterion of the poet's temperament in the natural images which he selects for ornament and illustration. We were particularly struck with the force of this remark in its application to the book before

us.

The sun, for example, is a part of the economy of nature which Mr Percival, in common with most of his fanciful brethren, makes great use of. Certainly no phenomena give rise to finer poetic feeling, of a most opposite character, than the daily coming and departing of the god of day. Yet in this whole volume of poems we never (we may be understood almost literally when we say never) see him in his morning glory, while the fading beauties of a sunset occur to darken our hearts in every page.

Before we take leave of our author, we cannot omit calling his attention to one or two faults of composition which a little care will enable him to correct. The chief of them is indefiniteness. Upon this, as applied to the unity of a whole poem, we have already remarked. But the same fault occurs in its parts, arising frequently, as it would seem, from too great ambition of ornament, which leads the bewildered imagination to run on from one illustration to