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senger is then applied to for a donation in the following verse, which is sung by the little beggars :

"Belli, Belli Giovanotti,
Che mangiate pasticiotti
E bevete del buon vino,
Un quattrin sull' altarino."

On the calends of May, the foundation festival of the altars of the Lares præstites was celebrated in all the houses of ancient Rome. The Lararium, bearing the small household gods, was decked on this occasion with fresh garlands of flowers and foliage, and modern antiquarians believe that the custom of the Roman children is a relic of the ancient festival.

It would be easy to multiply examples of similar coincidences; I shall conclude, however, with one of many instances of Neapolitan superstition.

The Neapolitan sailors never go to sea without a box of small images or puppets, some of which are patron saints, inherited from their progenitors, while others are more modern, but of tried efficacy in the hour of peril. When a storm overtakes the vessel, the sailors leave her to her fate, and bring upon deck the box of saints, one of which is held up, and loudly prayed to for assistance. The storm, however, increases, and the obstinate or powerless> saint is vehemently abused, and thrown upon the deck. Others are held up, prayed to, abused, and thrown down in succession, until the heavens become more propitious. The storm abates, all danger disappears, the saint last prayed to acquires the reputation of miraculous efficacy, and, after their return to Naples, is honoured with prayers.

ALL FOR LOVE; AND THE PILGRIM TO COMPOSTELLA. BY ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ. LL D. POET LAUREATE, &c.*

MR SOUTHEY here presents us with a brace of metrical legends, drawn from that inexhaustible and hitherto unrifled store-house, the Roman Catholic, or as it may less offensively, and perhaps more justly be called, the Pseudo-Christian Mythology. No English Protestant, perhaps no living Romanist, is so well acquainted with the religious fables which, from the first century to the intellectual age of Joanna Southcote and Prince Hohenloe, have encrusted the Christian church, as the prolific author of this little volume.

Few men, with understanding and morals so thoroughly Protestant, have imagination and feelings to comprehend so fully the beautiful in Romanism, while his keen sense of the ludicrous, only subdued by a deeper sense of religious awe, makes him as quickly alive to its absurdities. Thus qualified, he might, in the wealthy autumn of his powers, fulfil the purpose of his forward spring, by enriching the English language with a Poem founded on the imaginative and human parts of the Catholic creedadorned with all its ceremonial pomp -its sensuous pathos-its strange selfdenials-its soul-enthralling self-indulgences-and exalted by the multi

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tudinous agencies of saints and angels

departed spirits and demons. Tha laba and Kehama have shewn what he could effect with the gorgeous superstitions of Arabia and Hindostan ; but these have no substance in English imaginations, no significance for English hearts. Mr Southey has done for them all that could be done. He has presented them to the inward eye, distinctly, yet with all the splendid effects of multitude. Bodied forth by his romantic fancy, they very much resemble such a dream as might visit the late slumbers of a child after the first sight of a Christmas pantomime, or Easter melo-drama. He has done more he has breathed a-soul into shadows, gay and restless as gold and purple sunbeams on the western ocean. But the soul is not their own-it is not Arabesque, nor Hindoo, nor Oriental, but Christian English. No power of genius can reconcile, though it may disguise, the incongruity of a sensual religion with an almost ascetic morality. Even the human manners and actions which enter into the texture of the story are at variance with the sentiments and characters. Neither Oneiza nor Kailyal could have existed in a land of Harams. We do not allude to these discrepancies as

• London, Murray, 1829.

faults-though critical faults may be more than excused, when they denote a pertinacity of moral virtue. Mr Southey's imagination, which exercises a magical control over the ele ments of the visible universe, in no wise transforms or modifies his moral sense, which remains among monsters and necromantic illusions, unchanged, undaunted, as Ulysses in the bower of Circe. But in reality, these inconsistencies are involved in the subjects to which his peculiar genius, and the course of his studies, directed his choice. Milton encountered tenfold greater ab surdities and contradictions in his Paradise Lost-yet who can wish that he had chosen another theme? Who would part with Thalaba and Kehama-because, in order to address the sympathies of Europeans, it was necessary to semi-Christianize Orientalism? Though we are sometimes deceived into the expectation of a coupde-theatre, when the destroyer Thalaba, and the gentle Glendoveer, shall throw off their infidel garments, and turn out, the one a concealed agent of the Vice Society, (is it still in exist ence?) and the other a missionary in disguise; yet, on the whole, we are rather pleased to find our old friends Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Charity, Cleanliness, and Godliness, in all climates, and under all modes of belief. But a Catholic subject would have presented none of these difficulties. For whatever may be the sins of the Catholic church, they are not sins of omission-there is no true feeling of a Christian heart to which she does not afford an exponent. The blessed Mary-the divine womanhood-the virgin glorification of maternity, is surely the most beautiful, the loveliest, purest idea to which the erring spirit of man ever paid unbidden homage; and even among the inferior host of saints-tender maidens and young children, who suffered all torments and strange fire for their Saviour's love-nuns that melted away in visionary ecstasies, or struggled in solitude with unutterable pangs-bestowing the warmest affections of a passionate female nature on spiritual beings, and pining with the heart sickness of deferred hope for the day when death should consummate their mystic espousals-pilgrims who passed from land to land, and roamed the

earth while it was full of wonders——— visited cities now wrapt in desert sands as with a winding sheet, and empires sunk beneath the shifting oceanpassing like silent shadows through regions of an unknown tongue, or proclaiming the truth with most miraculous organ to savage tribes and barbaric monarchs-hermits, whose solitude was frequented by guardian angels, and assaulting fiends,-whose life," remote from public haunt," was one fierce combat with demoniac horrors, or imaginary voluptuousnessinfants that were consecrated in the womb-and penitents that rose from the grave of everlasting destructionamong all that multitude of hallowed names, which, thicker than stars, throng the wide heaven of popish fantasywhat spot of ground may not find a glorified patron-what grief but may claim a sympathizing comforter-what work of war or peace but may ask a blessing-what can a poet dream, which can want a subliming and sanctifying precedent? And for that peculiar faculty which Mr Southey possesses, of commending characteristic images and sounds to the inward eye-what wider or fairer field than the various and picturesque habits of monks, friars, and nuns, the pageantry of processions, the marvels of religious architecture, as displayed in Cathedrals, rich with " ancient ima gerie;" that from the pealing towers look down on populous cities-in convents, crowning the vine-clad hills of Spain and Italy, or offering shelter and food, and good men's prayers to such as plod the bare passes of the Alps-in abbeys, that reared their vast magnificence in seclusion-and in jewelled shrines, where bended knees and devout kisses wore away the marbles, the oratories, crosses, holy' wells, and hermitages, even the rosary, "so beautiful, whether hanging from the neck of youth, or busily moving in the hand of the aged?"—The ves per bells, which unite a whole na tion in one act of adoration-the solemn masses, which impute to the dead a continuous interest in the piety of the living-the midnight chants -the never-dying psalmody of devoted brethren, who, in ordered succession, receive and transmit the flame of ceaseless worship-the matins, and even-songs, heard duly in sad, and still, and sacred solitude-the deep,

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calm, traditional tone, and time-hallowed language of the ritual servicesounds which solemnize the air, speaking of what we are, and what we shall be, partake, even more than the song of birds, or melody of woods and waters, of that sublimed, chastened, and idealized humanity, which Poetry delights to find or beget in the objects of sense; while, in the mystic enthusiasm, and scholastic casuistry, which have grown up under the ample covert of the Roman church, employment is furnished to the subtlest intellect, and a cup of enchantment is proffered to the thirsty soul. For the Catholic faith, truly Catholic in its comprehensiveness, however presumptuously, in regard of truth and unity, it may have usurped the title, is all things to all men-it accommodates all tastes and humours-its dogmatical tenets, established as they are by bulls and councils, and sanctioned by the terrors of temporal and eternal fire, however strict and tight they confine the simple conscience, to the initiate, are but like conjurors' knots, which seem too fast to be unloosed, yet are easily slipped, without breach or harm done, by those who know how, and no one the wiser, so that the sceptical Logician, the illuminated Pantheist, may sit down with the dull, wonder-loving, miracle-bolting, matter-of-fact, literal Believer, as easily as the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Platonist, kept peace with the plain idolator within the pale of ancient Polytheism.

In truth, the Roman Catholic system is not the work of man, but of time and destiny-formed by the confluence and compromise of divers sects and factions-a joint-stock bank of errors, trading in the name and upon the credit of pure Christianity-to which corrupted Judaism contributed much, Paganism more, and each particular variety of heresy its quota. The policy of the Roman pontiffs, that master-piece of Satanic subtlety, confined all these lying spirits within its magic circle, and rendered them all its serviceable slaves. It were difficult to devise a shape of fallacy, a phantom of superstition, that hath not an equivalent, or any separable truth of the heart or of the understanding, which may not find an efficient symbol in the Papal Pantheon. How wide a range of thought, allusion, and il

lustration-how varied and powerful a machinery may such a creed supply to a poet capable of due selection and arrangement,-a poet of a learned imagination, and a healthy taste, who could embody and illuminate the fairest conceptions, and soften or conceal the foul and odious lineaments of superstition!

The immense mass of legendary narrative which the Catholic church has produced and sanctioned, must needs contain a vast variety of incident, both probable and marvellous ; and though many, perhaps most of the later inventions, bear evident marks of quackery and interested fraud, being in fact neither more nor less than puffing advertisements of particular shrines and relics, or more criminal impositions in support of a creed outworn, strongly marked by the unimaginative sameness and vulgarity which almost always adhere to venal falsehood; for justly" dull and venal," are coupled in the Dunciad; there are also many stories conceived in a better spirit, some devised with good and honest intentions; others, doubtless, believed by the relators, records of illusion, which lift up the veil of our nature, and histories of true and lovely piety, furnishing most delightful evidence, that Heaven will never suffer those to remain in darkness, who love and desire the light, whatever impediments men or devils may oppose to its beams. The ray that streams through the quaint imagery of a painted window, displaying the gaudy hues and distorted figures of saints, angels, and dragons, though discoloured as it passes, and doomed to struggle with the unnatural glimmer of noon-tide lamps, and pure hallowed tapers, is the same celestial body that glads the vernal morning.

Utterly rejecting, as we do, the critical dogma, that poetry of the highest class absolutely requires supernatural agency to produce its full effect, we would fain see what Mr Southey could perform on a large scale, with the miraculous powers of Catholic credulity. It seems that no other machinery is left for a modern poet, capable of sustaining a deep, moral, rational, or universal interest. The serious simplicity of Protestantism forbids any poetical use of natures which our scrip tural faith pronounces divine. Even in Milton, many pious persons are

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wounded by the intermixture of human inventions with the words of revelation. Allegorical personifications can only be tolerable in an express allegory, or apologue; and allegory (with due reverence to the shades of Spenser, and of John Bunyan) is a thing not much to our taste. The Greek and Latin Deities, what with bad schoolboy Latin, and worse Cockney English, have become downright bores. Indeed, they never meant much, apart from local and patriotic associations. While Minerva guarded the Acropolis, and Jupiter kept state in the Capitol, they were awful beings; but to one who was neither Greek nor Roman, they could never have been more than magnificent forms, ideal glorifications of bodily strength or beauty; and whatever poetic worship they may still retain, is owing far more to the paint ers and sculptors, than to the poets. The Gothic mythology has been partially tried, with but very partial suc cess. It is too obscure, too monstrous, too full of horrors, and far too unwieldy and unimaginable, to enter into any composition where the gorgeous dimness and rapid coruscations of lyric madness could not be unremitting ly maintained. Of the Mahometan and the Braminical systems, we have already spoken. They may be turned to good account in pure romance, where little more is required than to delight the eye of Fancy with brilliant costume and luxuriant scenery; but they cannot be connected with English feelings, and are so little fa miliar to ordinary readers, that an undue space must be occupied in explanatory detail (which is any thing but poetry) to render it intelligible. It is true, the allusions may be explained in the notes, or the prologomena, but that is an inartificial expedient, and makes the volume bulky and expensive. We are afraid, too, that we united brethren and sisteren of the three kingdoms find a great difficulty in transferring our sympathies and affections to the regions of Islamism and Boodhism. The affairs of India are closely intertwined, not only with our political, but in many instances with our personal and family interests, and yet it is wonderful how little the public think or know about them. The manners, the feelings, the religion of Eastern nations, present themselves to the imagination rather as splendid fictions

VOL. XXVI. NO. CLIV.

than as sober realities. Distance of place has the same effect on the mind as distance of time. Our belief in the Chinesian Pekin is as shadowy as our belief in the Egyptian Thebes; and it would be mere self-delusion to say, that we have any very satisfactory assurance of the existence of either. But the Roman Catholic faith, and all its attendant ministrations, lie at our own door; it grew out of the true religion into which we are baptized, and it has left evidence in our language, our customs, our sacred temples, and hoary ruins, of its substantive reality. That Mr Southey had once a definite purpose of composing a poem, on the plan we have been recommending, he himself declares in the introductory letter or chapter of his Vindicia Ecclesiæ Anglicane, where he also explains the honourable and reverential scruples which prevented the execution of the design. He perceived also, in the quaint legends and extravagant dogmata of Hagiology, ample materials for the production of humor ous effects and combinations, which he had thoughts of representing in some "wild and wondrous song," where in his graphic fancy might have rivalled the Diableries of Caillot's pencil; but his profound respect for the very errors and excrescences of religion made him relinquish the intention. Yet, not to leave the world without a sample of what he could have done, he here presents us with two legends, a serious and a comic-a tragedy and a farce-the one wild, solemn, and pathetic, the other a story of a cock and a hen.

On first opening the volume, we discover a neatly engraved frontispiece, and a poetical dedication to Caroline Bowles. We are glad to see such a tribute to female worth and genius. Then follows, "All for Love, or a Sinner Well Saved." The plot of which, taken from an apocryphal life of St Basil, we shall endeavour briefly to explain. A young man, named Eleëmon, freedman to Protesias, a wealthy citizen of Cæsarea, falls in love with Cyra, his master's daughter. The inequality of conditions, and the damsel's absolute destination to the cloister, cut him off from natural hope. Fearing even to woo the high-born maid, he tries the efficacy of secret prayers, vows, and sacrifice. He prays to all the saints and to the blessed Virgin, but meets

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with no success-then tries Venus, Artarte, Diana, (a more unsuitable patroness of a love-cause, by the way, than the immaculate Mary herself,) but all in vain. Their images were deaf-their oracles were dumb. Despairing, yet not resigned in his despair, he has recourse to the sorcerer Abibas, who, like a true fortune-teller, begins with informing him of his own name and errand; and finally, after some scoffing parley, refers him, with letters of introduction, to his master the Prince of the Air. Eleëmon, "in the strength of evil shame," ventures soul and all for love-repairs, according to the sorcerer's directions, to a Pagan's tomb, and performs the magic ceremonies enjoined. A strong arm seizes him, and with a whir of invisible wings, he is carried through the air-faster of course, than hurricanes, torrents, lightning, and sunbeams, leaving moon and stars behind-yet still rapt onward in the same erect attitude as he stood on the Pagan tomb, his bearers gradually assuming visible shape, as he approaches the habitation of unblest spirits-till, arrived at the utmost north, the realm of outer night, they appear in their proper substance and angel fiendishness. Here the Fallen Seraph sits on a throne of ice-and verily, the poet puts killing cold words into his mouth. Something like the nitrous winds of Madrid, which will not put a candle out, but will kill a man. He is one of the best devils in Modern Poetry, as far as he goesnearly equal to Mephistopheles. He is the very spirit of scorn-his breath "burns frore, and frost performs the work of fire." No imaginable rage of Hell could murder, like the unimpassioned, uncreating contempt of this hopeless scoffer. He scornfully accepts the tablets, and speaks of love like a goblin damn'd. However, the bargain is soon completed. The "young Amorist" is to have his master's daughter with her father's consent; and health, wealth, long life, and all worldly blessings for her portion, on condition of renouncing his baptism, and all hopes of salvation, and surrendering himself, rescue or no rescue, to the eternal enemy for ever. Satan, like an honourable gentleman, as he is, is anxious to make his own fair dealing in the transaction manifest.

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Thou comest of thine own accord, And actest knowingly.

Dost thou, who now to choose art free,

For ever pledge thyself to me,
As I shall help thee, say?'
'I do, so help me, Satan!' said
The wilful castaway."

The old gentleman, however, gen. tleman though he be, likes to do bu siness in a business-like way, and will have a bond of his new devotee. A scroll and reed are brought instantaneously; the point of the reed applied to Eleëmon's breast, "just where the heart-stroke plays," produces an electric shock, and draws a drop of his heart's blood, with which he signs the fatal testament that bequeaths him to eternal perdition. How the Evil One performs his engagement may be seen in the following beautiful verses :

Look at yon silent dwelling now!
A heavenly sight is there,
Where Cyra in her chamber kneels
Before the Cross in prayer.

She is not loth to leave the world;
For she hath been taught with joy
To think that prayer and praise thence-
forth

Will be her life's employ.

And thus her mind hath she inclined,
Her pleasure being still,
(An only child and motherless,)
To do her Father's will.

The moonlight falls upon her face,
Upraised in fervour meek,
While peaceful tears of piety
Are stealing down her cheek.

That duty done, the harmless maid
Disposed herself to rest;
No sin, no sorrow in her soul,
No trouble in her breast.

But when upon the pillow then, Composed, she laid her head, She little thought what unseen Powers Kept watch beside her bed.

A double ward had she that night, When evil near her drew; Her own Good Angel guarding her, And Eleëmon's too.

Their charge it was to keep her safe From all unholy things;

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