The highest reward for years of secluded labour, was found by him in the refined pleasure attendant on the labour itself; and the fame which would have been sought and gained by spirits more enterprising than his, but not more richly endowed, was supplied to him in the approbation bestowed on his pursuits by those chosen friends, who had learned how to value his intellectual accomplishments, and his moral worth. His first works were of a professional cast. In 1812, when he had been nearly twenty years a member of the Scottish bar, appeared his Remarks on the Constitution and Procedure of the Scottish Courts of Law;' an enlightened and manly estimate of the excellencies and imperfections of the Scottish judicial system, accompanied by a valuable appendix of historical matter. In 1820 he published An Essay on the Principles of Evidence, and their application to Subjects of Judicial Inquiry. This treatise, but for the length to which it was allowed unwittingly to extend, would have appeared in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica—its original destination; and to this it owes a breadth of plan which must have affected unfavourably its reception by the public. Metaphysicians do not seek for instruction in law-treatises: lawyers distrust independent metaphysical speculation. Mr Glassford's able Essay being partly metaphysical, partly professional, was ill calculated to command an audience in either quarter. The first part of it, a systematic analysis of the origin of human knowledge, is founded mainly on the doctrines of Stewart, and the other Masters of the Scottish Metaphysical School; but it exhibits much general reading, and no inconsiderable power of original philosophic thought. Its author had already attained, in a careful study of the writings of Bacon, a thorough mastery of the principles of the Inductive Logic; and had indeed executed a translation of the First Book of the Novum Organum; to which he had been encouraged, and which was greatly commended by Mr Stewart. This translation, with a series of notes, and an appendix of remarks, was printed the year before his death. It was then, like most of his later volumes, communicated only to his private friends; but it has since been made accessible to the public. It possesses distinguished merit in all its parts. The translation, if not every where beyond question, is, in the main, exceedingly faithful as well as clear; in point of closeness it may be compared favourably, not only with the paraphrase of Shaw, but even with Mr Wood's estimable version; and the perusal is made at once more agreeable, and more instructive, by the chaste and happy manner in which the diction, without being rendered ruggedly antique, is approximated to that of the English writings of the immortal author. The notes and appendix abound in thoughtful illustrations, both of the principles upon which the Baconian philosophy rests, and of the nature and limits of its applications; while, at not a few points, the writer diverges to gather attractive matter for reflection from those poetical studies, which shared his attention with the laws of scientific discovery. In the study of Poetry, as in the study of Philosophy, Mr Glassford's position was much higher than that of the merely receptive amateur. He delighted to speculate on the processes of the poetical art, as well as on the profound problems suggested by its results; he delighted to practise poetical composition, in that unassuming manner of which he twice gave pleasing specimens; and as to which, it is admitted by all competent inquirers, that success in it must be gained by the exercise of powers, among which skill in the use of versified language is but one of the smallest. Several years ago he printed privately, with a critical preface, a modernized version of the Ella,' and some other pieces of the ill-fated Chatterton. But his favourite poetical reading lay in the Literature of Italy; and his affection for it, and his admirable knowledge of its masterpieces, gave birth to the Translations, Preface, and Notes, which, with the original text of the poems selected for translation, fill the interesting and polished volume now before us. It was first published in 1834; but its enlargement and correction were among the latest occupations of his ever thoughtful life, and the new edition before us, has been issued, as already mentioned, under directions left by him to his Executors. Lyrical poetry, although in some of its walks it is the proper poetry of the people, is yet, in the mass, and especially in its most highly elaborated developments, less extensively popular than any other species. The pure lyric is caviare to the multitude: if it has gained an audience fit, though few, it has attained its utmost triumph, even over those to whom it is originally addressed. The mixed lyric, again, as well as the pure, is at once less readily appreciable than any other kind of poetical composition by those to whom its language is not native, and less easily transferable into a foreign tongue, even by those who attempt the task with the most masterly skill, and the finest natural endowments. The execution of a perfect lyrical translation would be a poetical quadrature of the circle. But there exist English versions of foreign lyrics, which are, at the same time, delightful poems in themselves, and excellent representatives of the poems from which they are taken; and such praise, in both respects, belongs to not a few of the little pieces which now lie before us. The sterner and more passionate touches of his original are those with which the translator deals least satisfactorily. It happens sometimes, also, that he is unable to catch with complete exactness of apprehension, or to remodel with complete aptness of expression, some deeply pregnant burst of fancy, or some highly felicitous turn of diction; but in such passages he is often singularly successful. Altogether, his translations evince both a rare capacity for apprehending poetical images, especially those which are suggested by external nature, and a very delicate sense of that which is graceful and tender in moral feeling. The taste of the diction is almost every where without a fault. A taste not less accurate, and a severe seriousness of sentiment, have directed the choice of the specimens translated; and these form a collection of small poems, at once beautiful in themselves, and interestingly illustrative of the history of Italian poetry. The picture which it presents is no doubt flattering; the translator has gathered rich and fragrant flowers, in a garden in which grow many worthless herbs, and not a few noxious weeds but elevated feeling and purely beautiful imagery are never more worthy of admiration, than when they arise in the midst of thought that is grovelling, and taste that is perverted. : The lyrical poetry of Italy is one of the most remarkable features in the literature of the nation. Indeed, if we compare the history of that literature with the literary history of other European countries, we may find reason for believing its characteristic peculiarity to consist in the sedulous cultivation, and systematic moulding of the lyric. It is little to say that the number of lyrical poems written in the Italian language has been greater than the number of poems belonging to any other class. This is nothing more than what is true in regard to every other cultivated nation. The lyric, in one or another of its forms, is the vehicle of expression which naturally suggests itself to minds struggling, rather to give vent to poetic feeling, than to create works of poetic art. But it is a different thing to assert what is equally true, that by the Italians the lyrical poem has been more thoroughly elaborated into a work of art than by the poets of any other country; and that, in the standard poetical literature of Italy, the lyric holds a more distinguished place than that which belongs to it in the poetry of any other European language. The fact is so. It is not indeed to be forgotten, that the Italians have bestowed upon the world masterpieces of genius in higher circles of the poetic sphere. It is not to be forgotten that their delicate and musical language was so moulded, in the great Epic of Dante, as to express worthily the sternest manli ness of thought, the most profound intensity of passion. It is not to be forgotten that the pseudo-chivalry of their petty courts was the only apparent reality, out of which sprang Ariosto's labyrinthine realm of cheerful enchantments, and Tasso's symmetrical world of romantic and pathetic beauty. All this must be remembered with thankfulness and reverence. But it must be remembered also, that these are no more than isolated phenomena; which were neither effects nor causes of any thing distinctive, in the progress or general character of the literature amidst which they stand. The narrative poetry of Italy, wonderful as is the individual excellence of its most august monuments, does not possess any characteristic national originality, except in the Vision of Dante alone that sublime Vision of the world of spirits, which did not, and could not open upon any other eye. The drama again, a kind of poetry which, where it has flourished, has always appeared in schools, had indeed its Italian school in the sixteenth century; but the artificial dryness of the works which issued from it was very unlike the native brilliancy, which, not long afterwards, marked, though in different ways, the dramatic literature of France, Spain, and England. Even in didactic poetry, in which circumstances were more favourable to success, the Italian language did not acquire, in its very zenith of brightness, any work of more than secondary merit. In truth, even in the departments just spoken of, Italian poetry was strongly affected by the influence of the lyrical models. Every one of its great poets cultivated lyrical poetry fondly and with success. The idea of incorporating the lyrical form with the dramatic, gave birth, in the sixteenth century, to those exquisite pieces of pastoral dialogue which, in a more recent age, encouraged a man of fine genius to venture on the creation of a new and anomalous kind of composition; in which genuine dramatic poetry should be wedded to modern stage-music. Nay, even into the severest and loftiest works of art, that appeared in narrative poetry-the 'Jerusalem Delivered' being the most striking example there entered much, in imagery, in feeling, and in diction, which, if not properly lyrical, was at least more closely allied to the lyric than any thing that has found its way into similar works of high merit, in any other language. In the mean time, however, the Italian poets had broken into the domain of lyrical poetry with the energetic spirit of discoverers, and had trodden its tangled paths as pioneers, whose steps all Europe was to follow. Drawing the first rudiments from their Provençal masters, they had been able, before the middle of the fourteenth century, to mature a new theory of lyrical art, not only setting up as the law of its forms a frame work which it was never to desert, but extending its competency, in respect of matter, to a province of which it had not till then taken formal possession. Of the pure lyric, the model was the symmetrical Canzone, though several freer forms were allowed as occasional indulgences: the Sicilian Sonnet, whose name has passed with its rules to other countries, was the recognised name of a mixed species, in which the lyrical poem was modified by elements borrowed from the didactic. In both of its sections-in the severe laws confining the poem. in point of form, and in the tempting license which widened the field of its matter the critical system thus established, and exemplified by Petrarch and the ardent minds of his age, continued to be obeyed with humble emulation by their successors. The restrictive rules were made comparatively light by the metrical flexibility of the language. The permission to engraft reflective thought on poetic fancy, in short and symmetrical compositions, became a signal boon, in circumstances which rendered the cultivation of the more ambitious kinds of poetry a task difficult or hopeless. In all its prescribed forms, but oftenest of all in that of the sonnet, the Italian lyric took its stand among the most honoured works of poetical art. Men of genius, men who were themselves eminent in invention as well as in criticism, did not disdain to devote a whole Essay or Lecture to the elucidation of a single Canzone or Sonnet. Elsewhere the word rhymer' was a term of slight account, if not of positive scorn; but, in the land of artists, it was by the name of rimatore' that the successful lyri poet was enrolled high on the file of fame; and the most finely endowed minds-alike those to which verse was but an infrequent pastime, and those which sought in the art of poetical composition a means of pouring forth the high thoughts and burning fancies of a literary life—were proud to be found worthy of contributing their mite to the standard collections of lyrics or ' rime.' It was thus that the poetical literature of Italy put on the aspect of a garden, boasting, indeed, but a few magnificent specimens of those lordly plants that need ample verge' as well as a kindly climate and a genial soil; but glowing every where with the fragrant loveliness which skilful culture imparts to the native wild-flowers of the meadow and the wood. It is thus that, without searching more widely for instances, we find, in the poetical casket now open before us, jewels laboured by workmen whose hands were practised in more ambitious tasks; artists who in most other nations would have disdained to busy themselves in shaping and polishing such diminutive gems as the Canzone, the Madrigal, or the Sonnet. In a collection of this sort, we ex |