TIME.

Mary; or, Female Friendship: a Poem, in Twelve Books. By Harriet Downing. With a Frontispiece. pp. 182. 4to. RITICAL severity itself must be disarmed by the circumstances under which our fair authoress has made this po

CRITI

etical debût; and as her own words are

infinitely more to the purpose than any imitation of ours could be, we take leave to transcribe verbatim her own Preface and apology.

"Those who are prepared to level the shaft of criticism at the simple MARY, are implored first to think of those ties, the dearest to them in the world (and all have some such left them), and then to reflect, that for the benefit of those nearest the heart of the author was the

offending Poem written. Perchance the motive may be an atonement for the deed; and the shaft may be replaced by gentler feelings benignly in the quiver."

This is an explanation which must go to the hearts of its readers, and might even sanction partiality of approval; but the poem itself needs not such adventitious support, and we offer praise

without hesitation, because the execution, no less than the object, deserves every eulogium. Age has not yet so far chilled our gallantry, as to render us insensible to the claims of female author. ship; and we are truly happy, upon the present occasion, to gratify our individual feelings, without impeachment of Europ. Mag. Vol. LXX. Nov. 1816.

our critical sagacity. The tale before us displays, in an interesting and well-told story, the exalted ardour of female friendship, which is evinced by the heroine in situations of peculiar delicacy and interest. The denouement is brought about by means entirely natural, and every incident has its requisite effect to facilitate a happy conclusion. Several pieces of a lighter cast are introduced, with much effect, in the course of the story, which, while they adorn the tale with new beauties, prove, that our fair friend's poetic powers are not restricted to the graver dignity of that heroic measure in which "Mary" is written. Our readers have, we hope, not concluded, that this poem is without faults-it has most of those incident to a writer not conversant with what may be termed the mechanism of composition:-in some instances a loo frequent recurrence of similar rhymessure-and an occasional tameness, from a redundancy of syllables in the meathe selection of a word or phrase in common use, when one of superior dignity would have conveyed the same idea, with infinitely increased effect. These are blemishes, however, which occurring but in some few instances through a poem of above 3000 lines, can scarcely be termed defects. The lady's own re vision has, doubtless, already discovered them, and we earnestly wish her an opportunity of correcting them in a future

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edition. We cannot omit one closing remark on a circumstance which, we will own, has surprised us--through the entire poem, we have noticed but one solitary instance of false rhyme; there may be more, but, if so, they have escaped us, and this alone is no common praise to an unpractised writer. From an impartial and attentive perusal of the whole volume, we have, therefore, the sincerest pleasure in most strongly recommending it to that patronage, which can alone render it subservient to those hallowed feelings of connubial tenderness which first prompted the attempt, and which, with the laurel crown of Genius, have now consecrated its completion. T.

Christabel; Kubla Khan, a Vision; Pains of Sleep. By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. pp. 64. Svo. 1816.

MR. COLERIDGE's last publication, containing the fragment of "Christabel," &c. &c. has already passed into a second edition;-it has been read,-it has been talked of, and it is at least not blighted by the cold overhanging atmosphere of neglect, however harshly it may have been visited by the rude breezes of disapprobation, trampled upon by the cold blooded critic by profession, and ill-spoken of in many a motly circle.

Every poet is not a Homer; nor, it may be retorted, is every critic an Aristotle; nor indeed, is it at all times that every reader is capable of encounter ing either the one or the other.

Surely however some merit, some considerable merit, ought not to be denied the individual who possesses the ability to sustain us throughout those hours of indolence and weariness which we all so frequently experience-in that midway of imagination which, though it be below the mountain heights of reason, is nevertheless above the depths of sensuality and corruption: and how ever numerous at the present day this class of authors may be, there are few, the beauty of whose descriptions,-the delicacy of whose characters,-the simplicity of whose sentiments,-and the morality of whose pages, may be placed in competition with these qualities in Coleridge.

In days of Gothic severity, when the convent and the castle were the temples of Virtue and of Beauty; when virgins were more loved, because they were

more retired;-when they were more sought after, because they were more backward to be found-when the sim plicity of their lives and their ignorance of the world, were equalled only by the purity of their manners and the sincerity of their hearts,-the mild, the tender-hearted, the virtuous, the amiable Christabel, "shone upon the dark earth."

Motherless from her birth, whether she possessed so much of the spirit of her deceased parent as to be formed in character and in shape after so excellent a model, or who she had for her companion and her patron, is not upon record; this however appears: she is charitable, religious, beautiful, and tender; and Mr. Coleridge has, with the taste and delicacy of an able artist, pourmost interesting colours. trayed his heroine in the sweetest and

It has been said of poetry, as of music and of painting, that dark shades and discordant passages seem absolutey necessary to the exposition of the bright and the harmonious. But it may also be contended that, for the setting forth of beauty, however necessary may be the introduction of deformity; however suitable to the exaltation of what is good may be the combination of that which is bad; however Virtue may appear more amiable in distress, and Vice more contemptible in power: it does not follow that, because a poet is harmonious he should be discordant; or, because he is manly, that he should be also puerile,-in other words, discor dant in the language of that whose essence is harmonious, and puerile in the conception of that whose character is heroism. Such weaknesses of style, and such puerilities of thought, are not under these pretensions to be reconciled either to our approbation or endurance; but who will condemn the lily because it has not the colour of tulip, or discard the unassuming primrose because it bears not upon its stem the glory of the sunflower.

This Poem, as we have before observed, is not heroic, neither is there any thing of Dryden or of Goldsmith. in it's composition: little also (though what it does contain includes the worst parts of both) either of Scott or Southey. It is, as Lord Byron says of it, "wildly original:" his lordship might have added, in some places, "inco herently unintelligible," it is not, therefore, to be judged of by comparison,

"A little child, a limber elf,

Singing, dancing, to itself,

A fairy thing with red round cheeks
That always finds, and never seeks,
Males such a vision to the sight
As fills a father's eyes with light;
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart, that he at last

Must needs express his love's excess With words of unmeant bitterness."Christabel having been disturbed during the previous night by dreams of terror and ill-forboding visions of her lover, in the depth of melancholy wanders into the forest alone and late: and here the feminine beauty and helplessness of Christabel, together with her sincerity. and pious spirit, are admirably contrasted with the depression which her unfortunate dreams had occasioned, and the wintry desolation and the gloomy silence of the surrounding scene :— "It was a lovely sight to see

The lady Christabel, when she
Was kneeling at the old oak tree.
Amid the jagged shadows
Of mossy leafless boughs,
Kneeling in the moonlight,
To make her gentle vows;
Her slender palms together prest,
Heaving sometimes on her breast;
Her face resign'd to bliss or bale-
Her face, Oh call it fair, not pale,
And both blue eyes more bright than clear,
Each about to have a tear."

But the terrors of Christabel become more lively at the melancholy and plaintive sounds which proceed from the other side of the oak:

"It moan'd as near as near could be, But what it is, she cannot tell.”—

"She folded her arms beneath her cloak, And stole to the other side of the oak,

What sees she there ?"

She discovers a strange and beautiful lady, elegantly attired, but in a most pitiable situation, having been ruthlessly seized by two unknown warriors, conveyed from her father's hall, and left alone, and without assistance, in this wild and desolate spot.

The name of this lady is Geraldine, the daughter of Baron Roland de Vaux, formerly the friend of Christabel's father; but, in consequence of a violent dispute which had arisen between them, former friendship only served to heighten their present animosity.

Bold and beautiful is the image by which Coleridge illustrates this circumstance, and we shall transcribe the passage which contains it:

"Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whisp ring tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;'
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother;
They parted-ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining-
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder 5
A dreary sea now flows between ;
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been."

But, to return to our story: Christabel speaks words of comfort to her distress, with the assurances of the service of Sir Leoline in her behalf; she must however be contented with the shelter and protection of the castle for the night; and the domestics having all retired to rest, she must sleep with Christabel:

"So up they rose, and forth they pass'd, With hurrying steps, yet nothing fast ;" Rather, by the way, an Irish mode of proceeding.

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"They cross'd the moat, and Christabel
Took the key that fitted well;
A litte door she opened straight,
All in the middle of the gate;

The gate that was iron'd within and without, Where an army in battle array had march'd out."

This poem, however romantic, is entire

ly domestic, and we cannot but esteem the poet who delights to remember, and to dwell upon such delicate and interesting incidents as these :

"O softly tread! said Christabel,

My father seldom sleepeth well. Sweet Christabel her feet she bares, And they are creeping up the stairs; Now in glimmer, and now in gloom, And now they pass the Baron's room As still as death, with stifled breath!"The following description of the bedchamber, however minute, is not the tedious account of an upholsterer ;"The moon shines dim in the open air, And not a moonbeam enters here. But they without its light can see The chamber carv'd so curiously, Carv'd with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain; For a lady's chamber meet:

The lamp with twofold silver chain Is fasten'd to an angel's feet." Christabel lost her mother the hour that she was born; but from her father and from her friends, as well as also from the domestics, she must have continually heard those little tales which Memory, in love and admiration of her qualities, took pleasure in repeating. Christabel loved her mother, and she would dwell upon the remembrance of many instances of her domestic providence with peculiar fondness; she does not forget, therefore, what to her was an additional recommendation of it, when offering the wild flower wine to the weary lady, who had sunk down upon the floor through weakness, to inform her that her mother made it:"O weary lady, Geraldine,

I pray you drink this cordial wine! It is a wine of virtuous powers; My mother made it of wild flowers." It has been observed, that "Christabel is not so censurable in itself, as it is in consideration of the source from

which it sprang." We must honestly confess we do not understand this:-it is assuredly the legitimate offspring of Coleridge's imagination; its relationship to his other compositions is strongly marked in all the more important features of it; it is, indeed, the twin-sister of his" Remorse." Besides, supposing it to be of quite a different character and complexion: is Hogarth's Sigismunda more censurable on it's author's account comparatively, than upon it's own intrinsically? If it had been equal to his works of humour in execution, how

ever different in character, it 'bad called forth equal approbation from the connoisseur; nay, would not the painter have attained to higher glory because of the versatility of his genius? And shall it be considered unlawful for Coleridge to pay his addresses to more than one muse? or for the children of his imagination to be not only sons, but daughters? and shall the offspring of that muse, whose coral mansion is the human heart, wherein she sings so wildly and so sweetly, be condemned because it is not so sublime, or because it is not so terrific as it might have been?

The Lady Geraldine is a very mysterious character, and there seems to be something preternatural both in her power and her appearance. The poet de scribes her as having a withered sidea mark of shame upon her-of fearful shuddering effect to the beholder; but from whom the touch of which takes away the power of expressing the abhorrence which it excites. All this Christabel sees and experiences on the fearful night of her charity to the bewildered lady, when she divides with her the pillow of her repose: at this sight the terrors of Christabel are excited; by this spell the tongue of Christabel is enchained. The fine eye of this strange lady also now and then assumes to the shuddering observation of Christabel, the size, the colour, the treacherous and malignant spirit of the serpent's orb of vision. These circumstances affect the imagination not more on their own account, than in dependence upon the style in which they are narrated, and upon the gentle spirit by which their horrors are experienced. These preternatural peculiarities the sequel of the poem must elucidate; till its appearance, we must look upon them as strong figures, indicative of the quality of the lady's disposition, or of the resuit of her introduction at the castle : we may imagine that she affects the happiness of Christabel, by an unfortunate attachment to her lover; or, by alienating from his own sweet maid the affection of her father; or, by introducing a chain of unhappy circumstances in the re-union of the two long-sundered friends,

These appearances, which disturb the peace of Chistabel so evidently, are not visible to Sir Leoline, and the portion of the poem which is now before the public is concluded by the catastrophe which this occasions.