sition, and harmonious in its numbers. The peculiar grace of its similes, the connexion and uniformity of its story, the ingenuity of its incidents, render it, as a poem, at least one of the most faultless, if not the most amusing books that have for some time appeared. On the whole, we must award to him the acknowledgment of a truly poetic genius. It has hitherto been directed to a species of composition inconsonant with the passing taste of the day; but, we repeat, when our ancient estimation of true beauty of poesy, harmony, and chaste imagery shall return, R- will claim that general attention and approval which are due to its peculiar merits."- Bath and Cheltenham Gazette, No. 578.

"There are always some men in the literary world, whose writings attract extraordinary attention; but who through adventitious aids, becoming what is termed the leading popular authors of the day, reap a golden harvest of success; while it as certainly happens, that many of their equally talented fellow-labourers in the field of literature, unpossessed of such adventitious aids, are doomed through the chilling influence of neglect to 'waste their sweetness on the desert air,' and pine in indigent obscurity. Every person is aware, that in this age of universal reading, there is an immense profusion of poesy that springs up around us, like some vast wilderness, in which flourish a boundless exuberance of foliage, a superabundance of the rankest weeds, and

many poisonous plants, that proudly lowering to the skies in beautiful luxuriance, taint, like the fabled Upas-tree, the surrounding atmosphere, and beneath whose baneful shadow, virtue, morality, and religion wither and die, while the demon of infidelity sits at their feet grinning to behold the moral desolation 'around him!

Yet amidst this enchanted forest of genius, are to be found embowered spots covered with the loveliest verdure, and decked with roses that bloom unfadingly, where the wearied wanderer, in search of intellectual pleasure, may repose on beds of the richest flowers, drink of the true Castalian streams that meander by, and breathe the delicious air of paradise. These remarks may be treated as common-place by the superficial reader; but they have been elicited from us by comparing the opposite fate of certain great poets of the present day. Who, for instance, has not heard of the princely sums obtained for their works by Byron, Scott, and Moore? and whose library do they not grace? And who has heard of the no less beautiful poetry of

contained in his two epic poems? Yet we, who have seen them, challenge the most fastidious critic to a comparison of their merits and defects, with the works of the before-named more popular rivals. We have lately risen from the perusal of his last epic, which fully confirms us in this opinion; for it is undeniably a work replete with the choicest beauties. It is founded on an Anglo-Saxon tale of the seventh century,

with all the true mannerism and practices of those rude and barbarous ages, wrought into the classical form of a regular epic, an undertaking that we know of no other poet in the present day who would venture to attempt,-heightened by a machinery perfectly consonant to that dark period of half Paganism and half Christianity. Indeed, the work appears to us like a noble but modern structure tastefully decorated with the florid ornaments of Gothic architecture, which, though it may want the sublime and simple grandeur of the ancients, yet it is built with such perfect regularity as at once pleases and astonishes; while its elaborate adornments are so arranged as not to destroy the effect, or possibly offend the eye of the judicious critic. We do not pretend to say that it has not faults, but they are more than compensated by its many splendid passages; and we sincerely regret that the multifarious contents of our paper prevent us from giving them insertion, as we should thereby gratify our feelings of admiration for so excellent a poem, and respect for its neglected, though highly-gifted author,-an author whom we are credibly informed is self-educated, and who had he received one hundredth part of that encouragement that has been so lavishly bestowed on Scott and Byron, would have ere now surprised the world with the vividness of his imagination.”—Bell's Life in London.

"The action is deeply wrought, anxiously interesting,

VOL. HI.

G

DEAR FRANK,

LETTER CIV.

L Cottage.

PARDON my not having written to you for so long a period. I have had nothing but complaints to utter, and those I am more weary of making than my friends can possibly be of listening to them. I am as one worn down with sorrows and misfortune.

My second epic has been now published some months. You say in your last, that you have "read it with intense interest and delight, and that in your opinion it surpasses in sweetness of language, vividness of poetic imagination, and originality, my first production." It may be,-l hope it is so. I have many letters from other friends, which justify and confirm your good opinion of the work. But alas! I labour in the poetic vineyard to no purpose. I toil in vain, while other and more fortunate bards reap an advantageous harvest in the fields of immortal

and fame. Not one of the leading reviews

iced in the least this poem. It is in

185

vain any

mic witɛ my fate. I must

submit, hoween" TELECINE., Wo Mydoom of obirvion. anguish, and wrenchedness til death shall kindes put a period a has a myy sufferings! I lo my sleepless pillow ngt: after night, reflec on my hard lot, xil I seen almost choked wi the agony of intense inuling

In addition to my other affictions, my moms thy and valued friend, Mrs. Fordyce, deparist. life about the time my last poem was dirimu A memoir of that excellent lady in .. published, at the end of which man tager write a few elegiac lines, winct à mass recollections of the sinceres.

mingled feelings of pay, ano potans

I send you a few ines, writes 346 was as death of a beloved female restas

and at rest; but I am let a m terous sea, driven by the seme towards the wreck-devote

while Hope's far-distant

across the dark billows of

mountaine d'e my sinking

Still

Your