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ranean shores, they will concentrate their forces, and pour them upon the coasts which remain unprotected by any stipulation; so that the fair fields of Tuscany and the Roman territory will pay for the exemption purchased by Sardinia and Naples. This, at least, is the universal expectation in those countries; and the character of the English nation is lowered in their estimation accordingly. In the late discussion, a fact transpired which must excite the most bitter sentiments of shame in every lover of his country. Lord Cochrane stated, that he had himself, three or four years ago, the humiliating duty assigned to him, of carrying to the Dey of Algiers rich presents from our Government; and a rumour was mentioned as prevailing in the Mediterranean, that a letter had been written to that Chief pirate, by the highest authority in the country; nor was any contradiction whatever given by the ministers to this assertion. Transactions so degrading, we verily believe, will never again tarnish the high fame of England in the eyes of mankind, now that the effectual remedy has been applied, by making the whole subject a matter of Parliamentary inquiry and public discussion.

It may be demanded then, towards what line of conduct our inferences point? We think clearly to this; that no treaty ought ever again to be made, involving a payment of tribute, although a ransom of slaves already captured may, perhaps, through tenderness towards their sufferings, be allowed. But that future outrages should plainly be prevented, not by armed force, not by negociation; and that the severest vengeance should be inflicted on the robbers the very first time they attack a vessel or a village belonging to any power not formally at war with them. This is the least which the law of nations allows us to do. But an immediate attack upon the nest of the pirates, upon Algiers itself, seems the most fit step to be taken; and will be justified by the very first act of violence which they shall commit. One of the evil effects of these inauspicious conventions is, that they prevent us from proceeding against the place until some such act of violence is perpetrated with the connivance of the Dey's government.

The safety and facility of an enterprize against the pirates, can admit of no doubt. Mr Croker explicitly states the works of Algiers to be a mere bugbear; and the force of the whole state to be trifling in the extreme. They are now at war with the Tunisians, who set them at defiance; and the tribes of Arabs in the immediate vicinity of the city, hold the power of the Dey in equal contempt, levying contributions on his subjects within sight of his walls. The officer alluded to above, asserted distinctly in the House of Commons, that two sail of the line would

at once put an end to the intolerable nuisance which we call the Algerine Government, and that without any risk whatever of failure. It is further to be remembered, that this government means only a band of three or four thousand Turkish Janisaries, who tyrannize over the native Algerines as much as over the the Christians who fall into their hands; who chuse the Dey out of their own body; and are so far from submitting to any regular or hereditary authority, that the present Chief's sons serve as common soldiers in the corps from which he himself was taken. To put down this execrable dynasty, would be fully as great a blessing to its own subjects, as to those of the neighbouring States.

In justification of such a measure, we trust that enough has already been urged. A few words only are required to show, that, without gross inconsistency, we cannot neglect this duty. We stood foremost among the champions of Africa, and opposers of the slave trade. But the miseries endured by the unhappy negroes are not greater than those of the Italians, Greeks and Spaniards, whose lot has been depicted in the course of these pages. Indeed, the slave trade of the Africans in the Mediterranean is considerably worse than that of the Europeans in the ' Atlantic; worse at least in its kind, though much less extensive. A moment's reflection may convince any one of this; for in the former case, the oppressor is the barbarian, and a barbarian.of the most savage and unprincipled caste; whereas, in the latter, with all its horrors, we must at least admit, that the sufferings of the slave are lighter, both because his master is more civilized, and because subjection is less severe to those who are less enlightened. While we are not even satisfied with doing all we can to prevent our own people from trading in African slaves, but are most righteously sounding the cry against this accursed traffic, in every tongue and in every clime, it is a prodigious inconsistency to permit the Africans to carry on a worse commerce in the blood of Europeans, and of those who have never bought or sold a single negro from the beginning of time. Against this abomination, our whole force should be bent, if necessary; but when a single blow could annihilate it, and we have only to obtain the consent of other nations whom we do not require to cooperate with us, what excuse can be imagined for our neither stirring ourselves, nor moving them in the cause? There is something monstrous in this departure from our own principles, and from the example set by us elsewhere, not only in the West, but in the recent deposition of the Kandian Ty

rant.

pp. 300.

ART. X. The City of the Plague, and other Poems. By JOHN WILSON. Author of the Isle of Palms, &c. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1816.

WE

E have often thought it unnatural to say, or to think, any thing harsh of the innocent and irritable race of poets. Most other writers are apt, in a thousand ways, to excite our spleen, and mortify our vanity,-by pretending to instruct our ignorance, to refute our errors, or to expose our prejudices. They offend us, in short, by assuming a superiority over us, and either disturbing our favourite notions, or at least showing us how much we have still to learn. The poet alone has none of this polemic and offensive spirit. His sole business is to give pleasure, and to gain praise from all descriptions of men. He contradicts nobody, and refutes nothing; but puts himself to a great deal of trouble for the sole purpose of raising delightful emotions in the breasts of his readers ;-and asks no other reward than that inward gratitude and approbation which, in such circumstances, it must be still more blessed to give than to receive. He is naturally to be regarded, therefore, as a benefactor to mankind-at least in purpose and design; and we really think that he generally is so in fact and reality also: For though the degrees of pleasure which they afford are infinitely various, and usually bear no proportion either to the pains they have taken, or the opinion they entertain of their success, we think there are few poets (of course we do not speak of mere versemongers), from a candid perusal of whose works all who have any true relish for poetry may not derive a sensible gratification, or who may not be regarded as having added something to the stores of our most refined and ennobling enjoyments. For our own parts, therefore, we confess that we are inclined to look on the whole tribe not only with indulgence, but with gratitude; and that we have often been indebted for very considerable gratification to works which we should be somewhat ashamed to praise, and not very proud of having written-works too humble, or too full of faults, to be tolerated by critical readers, or recommended with safety to such as are not critical.

But though we generally endeavour to read poetry in this indulgent humour, we cannot always afford to criticize it in the same amiable spirit-and that for reasons which we have explained, we believe, on some former occasion. Yet we are inclined to hope that, even in the discharge of this stern duty, it would not be difficult for an intelligent reader to trace the ha

bitual operation of the same lenient principles which we have now been endeavouring to recommend ;-and, hardly as we have been accused of dealing with some poetical adventurers, we flatter ourselves that we have always manifested the greatest tenderness and consideration for the whole tuneful brotherhood. There are some faults, indeed, to which we have found it impossible to show any mercy: But to all those errors that arise out of the poetical temperament, or are at least consistent with its higher attributes, we venture to assert, that we have been uniformly indulgent in a very remarkable degree-and have shown more favour than any critics ever did before us to extravagance and exaggeration, when springing from a genuine enthusiasm to redundant or misplaced description, when arising out of a true love of nature or of art,-and even to a little sickliness or weakness of sentiment, whenever it could be traced to an unaffected kindness of heart, or tenderness of fancy.

There are faults, however, as we have already hinted, incident to this branch of literature, for which we have little toleration; but we cannot think that our severity towards them should be construed into any want of indulgence to poets in general, since they are all of a kind that can only affect those who have a genuine veneration for the poetical character, and consist chiefly of apparent violations of its dignity and honour. Among the first and most usual, we might mention the indications of great conceit and self-admiration, when united with ordinary talents. Excellence in poetry is so high and so rare an excellence, as not only to eclipse, but to appear contrasted with all moderate degrees of merit. It has a tone and a language of its own, therefore, which it is mere impertinence in ordinary mortals to usurp; and when a writer of slender endowments assumes that which is only allowed to the highest, he not only makes his defects more conspicuous, by exposing them to such overwhelming comparisons, but provokes and disgusts us by the manifest folly and vanity of his pretensions-which unlucky qualities come naturally to strike us as the most prominent and characteristic of his works, and effectually indispose us towards any trifling though real merits they may happen to possess. Another and a more intolerable fault, as more frequently attaching to superior talents, is that perversity or affectation which leads an author to distort or disfigure his compositions, either by a silly ambition of singularity, an unfortunate attempt to combine qualities that are truly irreconcileable, or an absurd predilection for some fantastic style or manner, in which no one but himself can perceive any fitness or beauty. In such cases, we are not merely offended by the positive deformities which are thus pro

duced, but by the feeling that they are produced wilfully and with much effort, and by the humiliating spectacle they afford of the existence of paltry prejudices and despicable vanities in minds which we naturally love to consider as the dwellingplace of noble sentiments and enchanting contemplations. Akin to this source of displeasure, but of a more aggravated description, is that which arises from the visible indication of any great moral defect in those highly gifted spirits, whose natural office it seems to be, to purify and exalt the conceptions of ordinary men, by images more lofty and refined than can be suggested by the coarse realities of existence. We do not here allude so much. to the loose and luxurious descriptions of love and pleasure which may be found in the works of some great masters, as to the traces of those meaner and more malignant vices which appear still more inconsistent with the poetical character-the traces of paltry jealousy and envy of rival genius-of base servility and adulation to power or riches-of party profligacy or personal spite or rancour and all the other low and unworthy passions which excite a mingled feeling of loathing and contempt, and not only untune the mind for all fine or exalted contemplations, but at once disenchant all the fairy scenes whose creation must be referred to the agency of spirits so degraded.

Except when our bile is stirred by the display of such infirmities as these, we look upon ourselves as very indulgent judges of poetry; and believe we have, upon the whole, incurred the displeasure of the judicious much oftener by an excessive lenity, than by any undue measure of severity-for our rash and unqualified praises, than for our intemperate or embittered censures. In spite of all we have heard upon this subject, however, we still incline to adhere to our former system, and, to say the truth, are much more frequently disposed to repent us of our severities, than of our indulgence, as it is the nature of all angry feelings to be short-lived, and is, at all events, so much more agreeable to contemplate what is beautiful than what is offensive.

We do not know very well how we have been led into this long encomium on our own gentleness-unless it be that we are conscious of being more pleased with the volume before us than we feel any assurance that our readers will be.-There is something extremely amiable, at all events, in the character of Mr Wilson's genius:-a constant glow of kind and of pure affection -a great sensibility to the charms of external nature, and the delights of a private, innocent, and contemplative life-a fancy richly stored with images of natural beauty and simple enjoyments-great tenderness and pathos in the representation of suf

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