All, all must swear, the briber and the brib'd,
Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
The rich, the poor, the old man, and the young,
All, all make up one scheme of perjury,
That faith doth reel; the very name of God
Sounds like a juggler's charm; and bold with joy
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight) the owlet ATHEISM,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
And, hooting at the glorious sun in heaven,
Cries out, "where is it?"

Thankless too for peace,
(Peace long preserv'd by fleets and perilous seas)
Secure from actual warfare, we have lov'd
To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
Alas! for ages ignorant of all

It's ghastlier workings (famine or blue plague,
Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows)
We, this whole people, have been clamorous
For war and bloodshed, animating sports,
The which we pay for, as a thing to talk of,
Spectators and not combatants! no guess
Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,

No speculation on contingency,

However dim and vague, too vague and dim
To yield a justifying cause: and forth
(Stuff'd out with big preamble, holy names,
And adjurations of the God in heaven)
We send our mandates for the certain death
Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,
And women that would groan to see a child
Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war,
The best amusement for our morning meal!
The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers
From curses, who knows scarcely words enough
To ask a blessing of his heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute
And technical in victories and defeats,
And all our dainty terms for fratricide,

Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues
Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which
We join no feeling and attach no form,
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this godlike frame
Were gor'd without a pang; as if the wretch,
Who fell in battle doing bloody deeds,
Pass'd off to heaven, translated and not kill'd;
As tho' he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him!-Therefore evil days
Are coming on us, O my countrymen !

And

1

And what if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words, force us to feel
The desolation and the agony

Of our fierce doings?-'

There is so much truth, with so much serious, pointed, andsuitable exhortation, in these lines, that we feel it a duty, more for the sake of the public than of the author, to solicit their perusal.

Mr. C.'s invocation to the Great Ruler of Empires to spare this guilty country, and his address to his countrymen to return to virtue and to unite in repelling an impious invading foe, are equally excellent. His description of the French is such as must animate Britons, were the enemy to attempt an invasion of us, to unite as one man in accomplishing what the poet requires :

Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,
That laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
With deeds of murder; and still promising
Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
Poison life's amities, and cheat the heart
Of Faith and quict Hope, and all that soothes
And all that lifts the spirit! Stand we forth;
Render them back upon th' insulted ocean,
And let them toss as idly on it's waves

As the vile sea-weeds, which some mountain blast
Swept from our shores! And O! may we return
Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,
Repenting of the wrongs, with which we stung
So fierce a foe to frenzy!'

From bodings of misery to his country, he returns to the brighter prospects of hope. While, with the spirit of the Christian muse, he indulges,

Love and the thoughts that yearn for human kind,' he expresses a peculiar attachment to his native soil:

• There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrow'd from my country! O divine
And beauteous island, thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me!'

In the Ode entitled France,' the author, like a true Arcadian shepherd, adores

The spirit of divinest liberty;'

and he in course professes how much he wished, at the commencement of the revolution, [without bloodshed,] that France might break her fetters and obtain freedom;-how he hung his head

and

and wept at our interference ;-and how, amid all the horrors and atrocities attending the revolution, he cherished the hope that these black clouds, which darkened the horizon of French liberty, would disperse, and that France would be happy in herself and just to surrounding states. These hopes he now considers as vain. He invokes Freedom to forgive these idle dreams,' and particularly reprobates France for her conduct to Switzerland.

O France! that mockest heav'n, adult'rous, blind,
And patriot only in pernicious toils!

Are these thy boasts, champion of human kind :
To mix with kings in the low lust of sway,
Yell in the hunt, and share the murd'rous prey:
T' insult the shrine of liberty with spoils

From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray !'

A beautiful address to Liberty constitutes the last stanza.

'Frost at Midnight' is a pleasing picture of virtue and content in a cottage. The author's cradled babe seems to have inspired him, and here he dedicates his infant to solitude and religious contemplation.

Much as we admire the poetic spirit of this bard, we are forced to censure some of his lines as very prosaic. In his choice of words, also, he is not always sufficiently nice. The last line

As thou would'st fly for very eagerness,'

is extremely flat, and gives the idea of an exhausted muse. Small poems, like those before us, should be highly finished. Neither coarseness nor negligence should be seen in cabinet pictures.

Art. VI. A Key to the classical Pronunciation of Greek and Latin Proper Names, in which the Words are accented and divided into Syllables exactly as they ought to be pronounced; with References to Rules, which show the Analogy of Pronunciation. To which is added, a complete Vocabulary of Scripture Proper Names, divided into Syllables, and accented according to Rules drawn from Analogy and the best Usage. Concluding with Observations on/ the Greek and Latin Accent and Quantity, with some probable Conjectures on the Method of freeing them from the Obscurity and Confusion in which they are involved, both by the Ancients and Moderns. By John Walker, Author of the Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, &c. &c. 8vo. pp. 166. 5s. Boards. Robinsons. 1798.

MR. R. Walker is advantageously known both as a teacher of elocution and as an author on that subject. In the copious title-page prefixed to the present performance, the reader's attention will be attracted by a variety of topics of a

delicate

delicate and doubtful nature, which have been often discussed, but never satisfactorily decided. In questions of accent or prosody, an appeal must be made, not to reason only, but to sentiment also; and, as the feelings of mankind have different degrees of acuteness, distinctions will be made by the ear of one person which are altogether imperceptible to that of another. In reading Greek and Latin, it is acknowleged that the English follow the genius of their own pronunciation, and therefore continually violate the quantity of the antient languages, more than any other nation in Europe. When the penultimate is accented, its vowel, though followed by a single consonant, is always long. Before two consonants, no vowel sound is ever made long, except that of the diphthong au. These and in

numerable other solecisms in our pronunciation have produced different proposals for altering our present system; and, in reading the learned languages, for adopting a foreign, and particularly the Italian model. Mr. Walker's objections to this measure are worthy of attention.

In answer to this plea for alteration, it may be observed; that if this mode of pronouncing Latin be that of foreign nations, and were really so superior to our own, we certainly must perceive it in the pronunciation of foreigners, when we visit them, or they us: but I think I may appeal to the experience of every one who has had an opportunity of making the experiment; that so far from a superiority on the side of the foreign pronunciation, it seems much inferior to our own. I am aware of the power of habit, and of its being able to make the worse appear the better reason" on many occasions; but if the harmony of the Latin language depended so much on a preservation of the quantity as many pretend, this harmony would surely overcome the bias we have to our own pronunciation; especially if our own were really so destructive of harmony as it is said to be. Till, therefore, we have a more accurate idea of the nature of quantity, and of that beauty and harmony of which it is said to be the efficient in the pronunciation of Latin, we ought to preserve a pronunciation which has naturally sprung up in our own soil, and is congenial to our native language. Besides, an alteration of this kind would be attended with so much dispute and uncertainty as must make it highly impolitic to attempt it.

The analogy, then, of our own language being the rule for pronouncing the learned languages, we shall have little occasion for any other directions for the pronunciation of the Greek and Latin proper names, than such as are given for the pronunciation of English words. The general rules are followed almost without exception. The first and most obvious powers of the letters are adopted, and there is scarcely any difficulty but in the position of the accent; and as this depends so much on the quantity of the vowels, we need only inspect a dictionary to find the quantity of the penultimate vowel, and this determines the accent of all the Latin words; and it may be added

of

of almost all Greek words likewise *. Now in our pronunciation of Latin words, whatever be the quantity of the first syllable in a word of two syllables, we always place the accent on it: but in words of more syllables, if the penultimate be long, we place the accent on that, and if short, we accent the antepenultimate.

The Rules of the Latin accentuation are comprised in a clear and concise manner by Sanctius within four hexameters :

Accentum in se ipsa monosyllaba dictio ponit.
Exacuit sedem dissyllabon omne priorem

Ex tribus, extollit primam penultima curta :
Extollit seipsam quando est penultima longa.
These rules I have endeavoured to express in English verse s
Each monosyllable has its stress of course;
Words of two syllables, the first enforce :
A syllable that's long, and last but one,
Must have the accent upon that or none :
But if this syllable be short, the stress

Must on the last but two its force express.'

The only difference that seems to obtain between the pronuncia tion of the Greek and Latin languages is, that in the Latin ti and si, preceded by an accent, and followed by another vowel forming an improper diphthong, are pronounced as in English, like sh or zh, as natio, nation; persuasio, persuasion, &c.; and that in the Greek, the same letters retain their pure sound, as φιλαυτία, αγνωσία, προβάτων *... This difference, however, with very few exceptions, does not extend to proper names; which, coming to us through, and being mingled with, the Latin, fall into the general rule. In the same manner, though in Greek it was an established maxim, that if the last syllable was long, the accent could scarcely ever be higher than the penultimate; yet in our pronunciation of Greek, and particularly of proper names, the Latin analogy of accent is adopted: and though the last syllable is long in Demosthenes, Aristophanes, Theramenes, and Deiphobe, yet as the penultimate is short, the accent is placed on the antepenultimate, exactly as if they were Latin.'

The most important object of the present work is the settling the English quantity with which we pronounce Greek and Latin proper names. These are points in a state of great uncertainty; and, as Mr. W. justly observes, they are to be settled not so much by a deep knowlege of the dead languages, as by a thorough acquaintance with the analogies and general usage of our own tongue.

We think that Mr. Walker has in this, and in his other works, explained, in a more satisfactory manner than most of his predecessors, the essential distinctions between reading and

*That is, in the general pronunciation of Greek; for let the written accent be placed where it will, the quantitative accent, as it may be called, follows the analogy of the Latin.'

REV. MAX 1799.

E

singing.