No!-swift to the conflict her heroes forth fiew Undaunted by numbers-their Leader they knew! Impatient, from ocean they darted on shore, Where the boast of vain Gaul was re-cehoed no more, As she shrunk from bright honour, the badge of the brave! Alas! for bright Honour!-it falls while it shines! It drops, while proud Viet'ry her chaplet entwines, Unfelt on the brow where the laurels should bloom! Ungilded with trophies-neglected by power, Obscured by mean rulers in party's mean hour, Unrewarded it sleeps on Corunna's bleak shore, Where Valour stern points where her much injured MOORE From the vanquished alone* gains a wreath to his tomb! STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A COMET. A Night Piece.-(By James Hogg.) † How lovely is this wilder'd scene, As twilight from her vaults so blue Steals soft o'er Teviot's mountains green, To sleep embalmed in midnight dew. All hail ye hills, whose lowering height Like shadows scoops the yielding sky! And thou, mysterious guest of night, Dread traveller of immensity! Stranger of Heaven! I bid thee hail! Shred from the pall of glory riven, That flashest in celestial gale, Broad pennon of the King of Heaven! Art thou the flag of woe and death, From angel's ensign-staff unfurl'd? Art thou the standard of his wrath, Wav'd o'er a sordid, sinful world? No, from thy pure pellucid beam, That erst o'er plains of Bethle'm shone, No latent evil we can deem, Fair herald from th' eternal throne! Whate'er portends thy front of fire, Thy streaming locks, so lovely pale, * A small monument erected by Soult, the French general, to the memory of Moore, at Corunna. He Our friend Mr Hogg must be a prophet or magician, no less than a poet. sent us this elegant little poem too late for our last Number. The delay has given time for a comet to start up at his incantation. There is a sacred sublimity in the conception of the fifth stanza, that we may, perhaps, be now gazing at the same star which appeared at the birth of our Saviour. Or peace to man, or judgments dire, Stranger of Heaven! I bid thee hail! Where hast thou roam'd these thousand years? Why sought those polar paths again? From wildnerness of glowing spheres To fling thy vesture o'er the Wain? And when thou climbs't the milky way— And vanishest from human view, A thousand worlds shall hail thy ray Through wilds of yon empyreal blue! Oh! on thy rapid prow to glide! To sail the boundless skies with thee! And plow the twinkling stars aside, Like foam-bells on a tranquil sea; To brush the embers from the sun, The icicles from off the pole; Then far to other systems run, Where other moons and planets roll. Stranger of Heaven! O let thine eye Smile on a wild enthusiast's dream; Eccentric as thy course on high, And airy as thine ambient beam. And long, long may thy silver ray Our northern vault at eve adorn ; Then wheeling to the east away, Light the grey portals of the morn. REMARKS ON THE DESSERT: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE BANQUET. 66 THIS author we suppose to be newly broke loose from the shackles of his alma mater, and, like the bird which our universal Shakespeare somewhere mentions as typical of premature talent, has run away with the shell upon his head. This shell, to continue the metaphor, consists of fragments of the learned languages, neither rich or rare," but of sufficient power to stagger and bewilder the unlearned reader by their frequency and obscurity. This fault, however, may be forgiven for its rarity. Pedantry seems to bear the same relation to learning, that superstition does to religion. It is a kind of shadow, or what our author would rather call adumbration, which, if it does not always prove the substance true, reminds us of it very forcibly. The analogy is still closer, in so far as a studied avoidance of pedantry is often followed by a relaxation in the pursuits of learning, as a great fear of being supposed superstitious, or accused of bigotry, leads insensibly (in common minds at least) to lukewarmness in the most important of all concerns. There is no deficiency of talent in this little production, but with considerable vigour of thought, there is so much labour bestowed on it, that it reminds one of Mercutio's The Dessert. 1819.7 description of love," O heavy lightThis sort of ness, serious vanity." elegant trifling seems not very consonant to our insular genius. Prior has succeeded in some instances, and Pope's Rape of the Lock is admirable in its kind, but has had no worthy successor. The writer before us, whom we presume to be a very young one, seems desirous to unite two very discordant kinds of excellence; the learned and witty burlesque of Hudibras, and the playful ease and graceful gaiety of Pope. These, however, are styles utterly incompatible. He has made the mistake of a school-boy about to fly his kite, who loads it so heavily, that it refuses to mount. But the blemishes and the merits of this singular poem will be best understood by specimens of each. It is but candid to begin with some of O ye, for whom, or Inigo or Wren, Tells where the noisy steps of Grandeur Ye on the fretted couch that silks inclose, dream; Ye whom the scorching sun unblushing 31 Though when his orb, retiring through the west, Leaves languid Nature to her balmy rest, With mirth and revelry, and dance and song; While blind Intemperance, feverish and Mad Luxury fills the reason-quelling bowl, Pp. I, 2. The author goes on describing, in some nervous and pointed verses, the excess of luxurious indulgence, followed by the contrasted hardships that a pedestrian traveller crossing pathless wilds, and lodging in a sheep cot, might be exposed to with advantage, as giving a more poignant relish to the banquet, and more elegant delicacies of home on his return. He next bids us "Hear on this head the language of a friend." as he says, Now, whether this be the detail of In that dark period, those atrocious times, Scar'd in these days, by menace and reproof, I quitted, first, my dear paternal roof :"Tis said that scalds are cur'd by scorching heat, And those by scorpions bit must scorpions eat: From terror thus, in arms, my sole re source, And I became a volunteer par force; The barbarous musket o'er my shoulder threw, Which, thanks to Heaven, no fellow-creature slew ; The bursting knapsack round my neck I slung, Where all this world's dependencies I hung.- I went, and wearily I pac'd along The hoof worn track, iny fainting comrades throng. The soleless shoe on crippled feet they bind, That crimson marks of misery leave behind; Or boist'rous railers, with the jest profane, Revile their own and their companions' pain. Why should I blush the sorry meal to tell, That oft regal'd, as glimmering evening fell. Our hostelry some lone deserted hut, Though white our curdled drink, our bread like soot : On Commissary's beef oft pledg'd to dine, And drink his honour's health-but not his wine Or else some sheltering tree our troop receives, Its root our sopha-and our roof its leaves. Chains we demolish'd, where we came, and first The chains that link'd society we burst :- Had writ the catalogue of human woes. And lock'd from sight his bottle and his bride. By strict municipal arrangements fed, Where trembling leaves the clear horizon fringe, The sun begins the purple vale to tinge: Oblique he shoots his farewell look and parts; Her radiant orb a glance more cheering darts, That softly steals beneath the ivory lid :So beams the moon, by fleecy clouds half hid, Whose darkling edge contrasts the silver light; The ebon lashes of the eye of night, Through tangled forests to direct his way. The walls, the gloom-dispelling taper brightens, The kindling hearth the flaring branch enlightens. In hardest times, by her superior merit, Her independence she maintain'd with spirit; In spite of man and all his erring reason, No husband shar'd, nor aw'd her fair domain : No lordly spouse she owned—yet had a head Confess'd the hand of wretchedness could That saved itself and her-when others bled. scrawl: The warrior chairs repair'd with oaken pegs, Their fractur'd arms and splinter'd wooden legs; From my worn arm, the iron arm I threw, And to her open arms enraptur'd flew : Her tender hands around my neck supply My wallet's bands-a more endearing tye! not. Abundance on the board, the viands places, And what Good-humour carves, Politeness graces. A wine, preferred for our immediate use, With glowing fumes the fine medulla thrill, There is, to be sure, some quaintness here, and the hospitable lady appears in a somewhat questionable form. We should hear either more or less about her, before we could decide whether her intents were wicked or charitable. We, however, are inclined to be charitable, and suppose the lady, his countrywoman, receiving him with all the cordiality of mere friendly kindness. The transition from this story to the dessert is as abrupt as may be, and here the faults (juvenile faults we hope) of our poet's style appear in full magnitude, and he becomes so ultra-classical, that, on many occasions, "the line too labours, and the words move slow," burdened as they are with sounds of no familiar use, or ready pronunciation. There are a few easy sprightly lines free of this chiaro-scuro, referring to an ode which it seems the King of Prus VOL. V. sia addressed to his cook, the Sieur Noel. How important a person this artist was to the royal epicure, (not to Zimmerman's account of his medical say glutton,) any one who has read attendance on the last days of the great Frederick understand. To see a may human being burdened with disease, and drawing near the awful confines of that eternity from which he wished to shrink into mere oblivion, defeating all the efforts of his physicians to soften his misery by gross and forbidden indulgence in extravagant quantities of high seasoned and indigestible food, though the excessive pains that he suffered in consequence forced him, in three hours after these interdicted meats, to have recourse to the most powerful aperient medicines, is indeed melancholy. This curious narrative of Zimmerman's is of undoubted authority, being published immediately after the king's death, when there were many eye-witnesses of all that passed, very ready to correct any mis-statements. The good professor means neither satire nor ridicule by the plain detail given of the duct of his patient. So far otherwise, remedies he prescribed, and the conthat he appears to have approached him with a kind of blind adoration, and a most entire conviction that the king could do no wrong. He gives the most revolting and disgusting instances of this same king's propensity to indulge his appetite, conceal that indulgence from his medical attendtal coarseness, imputing to their ignoants, and then insult them with brurance or mismanagement, the consequence of his own sordid indulgence. At some other time we shall entertain our readers with a few extracts the devoted humility and simplicity from this curious narrative, in which of the philosophical and pious Doctor is finely contrasted with the tyrannical caprice of the dying epicure,-who, died and made no sign. moreover, lines which celebrate his celebration of In the meantime, we shall insert the the redoubted Sieur Noel. 'Twas thus that he to latest times bequeath'd, He, round whose front the bays and par- dart; E their strings, The race extinct of warrior-poet-kings: When shall our longing eyes behold again Sway'd by one hand the sceptre, steel, and pen? p. 15. Now, having done justice to some of his happier efforts, we shall instance some lines, that, if they do not require a comment, will, at least, even in this all-educating age, make young ladies at pause for explanation,"Lo in this fine coagulated lymph, Which draws the eye of each admiring nymph." I do not know that many of these admiring nymphs would recognise their old acquaintance Cheese under this name, or, if they should, I am not sure that it would engross much of their admiration amidst the display of far fetched and highly decorated viands that adorn The Dessert. The two following lines throw a dubious light over this same lymph. "Tumultuous myriads rush upon the sight, A mighty nation not a mouthful quite." The ornaments of the Dessert are thus described: Amours of Sapphio, Werter, Abelard; Hoary with frost young Cycnus and Ado nis. Here Asia's florid birds, her ape and monkey, And there Silenus on unsaddled donkey: Astride Bucephalus, young Ammon enters With sirens, clephants, and hippocentaurs. pp. 18, 19. Then we have The deities of classic fiction, and all the shadowy tribes attendant on their state, have long since shrunk even from their airy habitation in modern poetry, before the stern rebuke of Johnson. We are more surprised than sorry to meet our old college acquaintance under material forms at this fanciful repast, and can easily imagine their gratitude for being onee more brought into notice even in this furtive manner, to borrow an expression from our bard thus exemplified, Forbear, nor maladroitly sip A furtive kiss from Chloe's pouting lip." In a long and sometimes happy enough description of the effects of coloured crystal, we find the following lines: What scintillating streams of light illume, And with their vivid pencils tint the room!The omphaloptic stud,―cerulean cup, Where Jove from Ganimede might nectar sup. Diaphanous decanter, &c. p. 23. Then we have a most erudite detail of various wines, whose effect is thus hinted at. Unseen they pass the vitreous canal, This needless parade of learning, and the conflicting powers of mind graspobjects incompatible with each other, ing, as we have mentioned before, at throw an air of indistinctness and labour over the whole. Where something of great importance or deep interest is to be unfolded in poetry, the power of the subject illuminates the style in which it is conveyed. Our attention is kept up, and our expectation excited by the events or characters, and we unconsciously make exertions to penetrate obscurity, or disentangle perplexity, The citron's smooth, the pine's hirsuter that we should never have thought of 1 coat; and afterwards, Yes, come, Lyæus, leave thy lucid rills, where a lighter theme produced a less eager and serious interest. A song or a light ludicrous or playful satire must have nothing involved or perplexed, every sentence must have point, neatness, and ease, and the meaning must be obvious at the first glance. No one thinks it worth while to ponder and pause over trifles whose |