so usefully known to the world of letters as Dr. Aiken. The plan of the present volume is both comprehensive and judicious; containing, as it does, a chronological series of our classical poets from Ben Jonson to Beattie, without mutilation or abridgment, enriched with biographical and critical notices of the authors. It is certainly a great improvement not to subject the poems to the caprice of the compiler, but to give them in an entire state; and the biographical prefaces are executed in a very neat and perspicuous manner.-Monthly Review, March, 1822. ART. 36.-The Village Minstrel, and other Poems. By JOHN CLARE, the Northamptonshire Peasant, Author of "Poems on Rural Life and Scenery." 2 Vols. 12mo. London. 1821. Since the publication of the former poems of this Northamptonshire peasant, and which attracted a considerable share of attention, the genius of the author has acquired for him some powerful and valuable friends. The kindness of his publishers, indeed, should first be mentioned: for they afforded him an opportunity of appearing before the world not only without a chance of loss, but with a decent remuneration,* and thus became the means of making his merits known to several noblemen and gentlemen; who generously contributed a fund sufficient at all events to secure the poet from the evils of poverty, and to enable him to apply his mind more freely to his favourite pursuit. John Clare was no sooner in possession of this little competency, than, "not having the fear" of Mr. Malthus "before his eyes, but moved and seduced by the instigation" of a natural feeling, he became wedded not to "immortal verse," but to the rosebud in humble life,' 'Patty of the vale,' alias 'Martha Turner,' a country maiden, on whom his affections had been for some time fixed. The lady's dower, we are told, and we congratulate her lord on the acquisition, consists of 'the virtues of industry, frugality, neatness, good temper, and a sincere love for her husband.' His household at the present time comprehends his aged and infirm parents, his wife, and one sole daughter of his house and home;' who, it is said, seems to be the avant-courier of a numerous progeny. We are sorry to add that, notwithstanding the kind exertions which have been made in his favour, he still occasionally feels the pressure of pecuniary *Four times the amount of the sum which Milton received for the copy-right of Paradise Lost." difficulties: but we sincerely hope that the publication of 'The Village Minstrel' will put his finances on a very flourishing footing. We observe in this publication the same natural graces of thought and simplicity of rural imagery which his earlier poems so profusely displayed: but we could have wished that the poet's friends had not so soon presented him again before the public, as we feel persuaded that, by labour and attention, his style would be most materially improved. We cannot forbear to suggest to him the advice which Dr. Moore offered to Burns, but which in fact is much more applicable to Clare, that he should "deal more sparingly for the future in the provincial dialect." Burns's Scotticisms give a lively simplicity and beauty to his poems, but there is nothing "Doric" in the Northamptonshire dialect of this writer.-Ibid. ART. 37.-The Martyr of Antioch; a Dramatic Poem. By the Rev. H. H. MILMAN, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, pp. 168. London, 1822. [Boston and New-York.] age. The Martyr of Antioch is a suitable companion to The Fall of Jerusalem, by the same admirable and pure-minded writer. It breathes the sublimed and etherealised spirit of the most exalted poetry, and is imbued with a tinge of classical elegance and simplicity qualities never more rare among writers than in this Mr. Milman appears to be a man of the purest mind, of the most polished taste, of genuine and deep-felt piety, of great sensibility to the unutterable beauties and sublimities of the sacred volume, and of the loftiest sympathy with all that belongs to and concerns the history of those who "counted not their lives dear to them," but "resisted unto blood," striving against idolatry and corruption. His "heavenly muse" is, therefore, successful only when she sings of heavenly themes. Less energetic than the author of Childe Harold, he has perhaps more of the true sublime; and if his language be not so compressed, nor his cogitations so profound, he is a greater master of the heart, and infinitely more soothing and elevating. He shines, not with an overpowering and consuming brightness, but with a tempered, equable, and gentle radiance. He scorns those paltry figures of rhetoric, which have such attractions for meaner minds, and is neither epigrammatic nor antithetical; but, deeply impressed with his subject, and rich in the treasures of heavenly wisdom and divine poetry, he relies on these resources, and has studied that elegance which depends for its inexpressible charm on its simplicity. It appears to us, that this exquisite poem would have lost nothing had the author abandoned the dramatic form, and given it as a regular and continuous composition. The plot, if so it may be called, is too simple, and the incidents too few to produce dramatic effect. He has been singularly fortunate in making the interest of the poem to turn, not on the bodily, but on the mental agonies of the Martyr neophyte: For what is death, in its most savage forms-what are The lifted axe, the agonising wheel, Luke's iron crown, or Damien's bed of steel,' to the irrepressible conflict of filial, fraternal, or conjugal love, and the paramount calls of a terrible duty-at such an hour? When the great Lord Russel had parted from his beloved and devoted wife, on the morning of the day in which he was executed, he exclaimed, "The bitterness of death is past!" Let the reader peruse the interview between the Heathen priest and his Christian daughter, or turn to that between the Prefect Olibius and the object of his affectionate love, and, with all this, let him conjoin the tortures of a savage and immediate death--and he will have some idea of the contending passions that struggled for the ascendancy in the bosom of the young and tender neophyte. We cannot descend from the feelings to which our remarks have given birth, and commence a verbal critique. Yet from the esteem we cherish for the author, we must inform him, that we think he has once and again been guilty of a considerable degree of carelessness. Mr. Milman should not have suffered the worthy Editor of the Literary Gazette* to catch him tripping in grammar? These things are not well.-Old Edinburgh Magazine, March, 1822. ART. 38.-Minstrel Love, from the German of the author of Undine. By GEORGE SOANE, A. B. 2 Vols. 12mo. London. [and NewYork.] pure THE translator of this work seems to have undertaken it ly in compassion to the public, and zeal for the Baron de la Motte Fouque, that his beautiful fictions might not any longer suffer by the villanous disguise under which his "Sintram" has * Why does Mr. Dibdin suffer himself to be so wantonly and rudely assailed in this journal, [Lit. Gaz.] without inflicting a just and severe chastisement on his assailant? Does he consider his traducer below his notice, and best answered by silent contempt? If this be his feeling, perhaps he is in the right' been given to the English reader. This translation is free, easy; and not deficient in elegance; even the faults of his own style resemble those of his admired original so much, that they perhaps can scarcely be deemed disadvantages, rather heightening the resemblance to it, than robbing it of any of its graces. Mr. Soane writes bad poetry; so does the Baron. Mr. Soane objects to the frequent use of particular words; sometimes even of vulgar ones, such for example as ordentlich; and we object to Mr. Soane's repetition of words somewhat affected, as "stilly," and sometimes giving an idea less elegant or impressive than the author's. To apply the term scolding, to the remonstrances of the lovely queen Solyma, or to a gallant knight rebuking his horse, is not happy. But, in general, Mr. Soane's translation is quite elegant, and quite faithful enough. The story itself glows with German feeling and German mysticism. The pure romance of the Provençal Troubadour is finely set forth in the character of the hero, and every page is stamped with genius; of a kind, however, too abstracted to be relished, or even understood, by the common herd of novel-readers.-New Monthly Magazine, 1822. ART. 39.-The Second Tour of Dr. Syntax, in search of consolation; á Poem. Royal 8vo. (With 24 Coloured Plates.) London, 1820. [Carey & Lee, Philadelphia.] ART. 40.-The Third Tour of Dr. Syntax, in search of a Wife. A poem. Royal 8vo. (With 25 Coloured Plates.) 1821. EXCESS in amusement is the great beginning of bad habits of all kinds; and, if we proceed from life to literature, how many instances do we daily see of authors whose first and shorter levities would have been forgiven and forgotten, had they not transgressed as they advanced all the limits of sensible toleration, and tarnished their brief and early honours with long and late inferiority of wit. The observation may be extended even to the ignoble art of puffing. A little modest impudence in this way is very generally overlooked; but who in our era and our altered state of manners, can suffer the same liberties of self applause which we allow to an Ovid or a Lucan? We say nothing of the equality of modern genius with that of these worthies; but (thanks to a better creed, and nobler motives of action!) there is no danger of a later poet, who approaches within miles of his humblest predecessors, being bold enough to talk of himself as they have done. We have rambled into this little digression while taking these Second and Third Tours in company with Dr. Syntax. It would grieve us to be too severe on an established favourite with a certain class of readers: more especially one who has passed (if we are rightly informed) a long life in the service of literature; and some of whose earlier productions manifest a different degree of poetical power from that of the works before us. The truth is, however, that a poet who professes to be attended by a painter, and to be furnishing subjects for the pencil in the whole of his efforts, must be too often destitute of the ideal charm of composition, and of all that delicate excellence which answers to such a feeling. Comparatively, he can have to expatiate in but a narrow intellectual world of his own creating, peopling, and endowing; for detached forms and petty peculiarities must be the chief food of his imagination. If these observations to the limited task of the poet who ex professo leads the painter, what must be their justice of application to him who follows the painter? This, we are willing to imagine, has not often been the case, where any due talent has existed to rescue the nobler workman of the two from this subserviency. Yet we fear, that Dr. Syntax must plead guilty to the charge of playing second fiddle in the most considerable portion of his labours; though Mr. Rowlandson has so admirably (on many occasions at least) played the first, that the poetical pride of his coadjutor, of whatever quality it may be, must have been the less painfully wounded. The information that the author is an octogenarian, must also greatly check the severity of criticism. While, however, we pay due respect to the former merits of an experienced writer, we must not forget the contending duty which we owe to our readers in the existing case; and we must acknowledge that a large part of both these volumes of the Tour of Syntax does remind us, in its diffuseness, and in its dilating and diluting properties, of that great master of feeble amplification, our noble Secretary for Foreign Affairs; [Lord Londonderry.]-Monthly Review, Dec. 1821. ART. 41.-Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle. Edinburgh, 1822. THE publication whose title we have just copied, is, in a high degree, lascivious and indecent in many of its details-unfit for the perusal of the youth of either sex, whose imaginations it is calculated to inflame-and deeply injurious to our national priesthood, than whom the world does not contain a more moral, useful, zealous, and apostolic order of men. The worst of it is, that Sin is here tricked out in the habiliments of Holiness, |