attributable to the transference of notions connected with logical language?"

And all this in a poem about Acus, a tailor!

Waldron prefers, unhappily, Geraldine to Alice, and Geraldine returns his love, exciting thus the deep indignation of the neglected fair one,

whom love and jealousy bear up

To mingle poison in her rival's cup.

Miss A. has among her adorers one of the genus loafer, whose appellation, not improperly, is Bore. B. is acquainted with a milliner-the milliner of the disconsolate lady.

She made this milliner her friend, who swore,
To work her full revenge through Mr. Bore.
the poet-

And now says

I leave your sympathetic fancies,
To fill the outline of this pencil sketch.

This filling has been, with us at least, a matter of no little dif culty. We believe, however, that the affair is intended to run thus:-Waldron is enticed to some vile sins by Bore, and the knowledge of these, on the part of Alice, places the former gentleman in her power.

We are now introduced to a fête champêtre at the residence of Acus, who, by the way, has a son, Clifford, a suitor to Geraldine with the approbation of her father-that good old gentleman, for whom our sympathies were excited in the beginning of things, being influenced by the consideration that this scion of the house of the tailor will inherit a plum. The worst of the whole is, however, that the romantic Geraldine, who should have known better, and who loves Waldron, loves also the young knight of the shears. The consequence is a rencontre of the rival suitors at the fete champêtre; Waldron knocking his antagonist on the head, and throwing him into the lake. The murderer, as well as we can make out the narrative, now joins a piratical band, among whom he alternately cuts throats and sings songs of his own composition. In the mean time the deserted Geraldine mourns alone, till, upon a certain day,

A shape stood by her like a thing of air

She started-Waldron's haggard face was there.

He laid her gently down, of sense bereft,
And sunk his picture on her bosom's snow,
And close beside these lines in blood he left:
"Farewell forever, Geraldine, I go
Another woman's victim-dare I tell?

"Tis Alice!-curse us, Geraldine !-farewell!"

There is no possibility of denying the fact: this is a droll piece of business. The lover brings forth a miniature, (Mr. Dawes has a passion for miniatures,) sinks it in the bosom of the lady, cuts his finger, and writes with the blood an epistle, (where is not specified, but we presume he indites it upon the bosom as it is "close beside" the picture,) in which epistle he announces that he is "another woman's victim," giving us to understand that he himself is a woman after all, and concluding with the delicious bit of Billingsgate

dare I tell?

"Tis Alice-curse us, Geraldine !-farewell! We suppose, however, that "curse us" is a misprint; for why should Geraldine curse both herself and her lover?-it should

have been " curse it!" no doubt. The whole passage, perhaps,

would have read better thus

oh, my eye!

"Tis Alice !—d—n it, Geraldine!—good bye!

The remainder of the narrative may be briefly summed up. Waldron returns to his professional engagements with the pirates, while Geraldine, attended by her father, goes to sea for the benefit of her health. The consequence is inevitable. The vessels of the separated lovers meet and engage in the most diabolical of conflicts. Both are blown all to pieces. In a boat from one vessel, Waldron escapes-in a boat from the other, the lady Geraldine. Now, as a second natural consequence, the parties meet again-Destiny is every thing in such cases. Well, the parties meet again. The lady Geraldine has "that miniature" about her neck, and the circumstance proves too much for the excited state of mind of Mr. Waldron. He just seizes her ladyship, therefore, by the small of the waist and incontinently leaps with her into the sea.

However intolerably absurd this skeleton of the story may appear, a thorough perusal will convince the reader that the entire

fabric is even more so. It is impossible to convey, in any such digest as we have given, a full idea of the niaiseries with which the narrative abounds. An utter want of keeping is especially manifest throughout. In the most solemnly serious passages we have, for example, incidents of the world of 1839, jumbled up with the distorted mythology of the Greeks. Our conclusion of the drama, as we just gave it, was perhaps ludicrous enough; but how much more preposterous does it appear in the grave language of the poet himself!

And round her neck the miniature was hung

Of him who gazed with Hell's unmingled wo;
He saw her, kissed her cheek, and wildly flung
His arms around her with a mad'ning throw-
Then plunged within the cold unfathomed deep
While sirens sang their victim to his sleep!

Only think of a group of sirens singing to sleep a modern “miniatured" flirt, kicking about in the water with a New York dandy in tight pantaloons!

But not even these stupidities would suffice to justify a total condemnation of the poetry of Mr. Dawes. We have known follies very similar committed by men of real ability, and have been induced to disregard them in earnest admiration of the brilliancy of the minor beauty of style. Simplicity, perspicuity and vigor, or a well-disciplined ornateness of language, have done wonders for the reputation of many a writer really deficient in the higher and more essential qualities of the Muse. But upon these minor points of manner our poet has not even the shadow of a shadow to sustain him. His works, in this respect, may be regarded as a theatrical world of mere verbiage, somewhat speciously bedizzened with a tinselly meaning well adapted to the eyes of the rabble. There is not a page of anything that he has written which will bear, for an instant, the scrutiny of a critical eye. Exceedingly fond of the glitter of metaphor, he has not the capacity to manage it, and, in the awkward attempt, jumbles together the most incongruous of ornament. Let us take any passage of “Geraldine" by way of exemplification.

-Thy rivers swell the sea-
In one eternal diapason pour
Thy cataracts the hymn of liberty,
Teaching the clouds to thunder.

Here we have cataracts teaching clouds to thunder-and how?

By means of a hymn.

Why should chromatic discord charm the ear

And smiles and tears stream o'er with troubled joy?

Tears may stream over, but not smiles.

Then comes the breathing time of young Romance,
The June of life, when summer's earliest ray
Warms the red arteries, that bound and dance
With soft voluptuous impulses at play,

While the full heart sends forth as from a hive
A thousand winged messengers alive.

Let us reduce this to a simple statement, and we have-what? The earliest ray of summer warming red arteries, which are bounding and dancing, and playing with a parcel of urchins, called voluptuous impulses, while the bee-hive of a heart attached to these dancing arteries is at the same time sending forth a swarm of its innocent little inhabitants.

The eyes were like the sapphire of deep air,
The garb that distance robes elysium in,
But oh, so much of heaven lingered there
The wayward heart forgot its blissful sin
And worshipped all Religion well forbids
Beneath the silken fringes of their lids.

That distance is not the cause of the sapphire of the sky, is not to our present purpose. We wish merely to call attention to the verbiage of the stanza. It is impossible to put the latter portion of it into any thing like intelligible prose. So much of heaven lingered in the lady's eyes that the wayward heart forgot its blissful sin, and worshiped everything which religion forbids, beneath the silken fringes of the lady's eyelids. This we cannot be compelled to understand, and shall therefore say nothing further about it.

She loved to lend Imagination wing

And link her heart with Juliet's in a dream,
And feel the music of a sister string

That thrilled the current of her vital stream.

How delightful a picture we have here! A lady is lending one of her wings to the spirit, or genius, called Imagination, who, of course, has lost one of his own. While thus employed with one hand, with the other she is chaining her heart to the heart of the fair Juliet. At the same time she is feeling the music of a sister string, and this string is thrilling the current of the lady's vital

stream. If this is downright nonsense we cannot be held responsible for its perpetration; it is but the downright nonsense of Mr. Dawes. Again—

Without the Palinurus of self-science

Byron embarked upon the stormy sea,
To adverse breezes hurling his defiance
And dashing up the rainbows on his lee,
And chasing those he made in wildest mirth,
Or sending back their images to earth.

This stanza we have more than once seen quoted as a fine specimen of the poetical powers of our author. His lordship, no doubt, is herein made to cut a very remarkable figure. Let us imagine him, for one moment, embarked upon a stormy sea, hurling his defiance, (literally throwing his gauntlet or glove,) to the adverse breezes, dashing up rainbows on his lee, laughing at them, and chasing them at the same time, and, in conclusion, "sending back their images to earth." But we have already wearied the reader with this abominable rigmarole. We shall be pardoned, (after the many specimens thus given at random,) for not carrying. out the design we originally intended: that of commenting upon two or three successive pages of "Geraldine," with a view of showing, (in a spirit apparently more fair than that of particular selection,) the entireness with which the whole poem is pervaded by unintelligibility. To every thinking mind, however, this would seem a work of supererogation. In such matters, by such understandings, the brick of the skolastikos will be received implicitly as a sample of the house. The writer capable, to any extent, of such absurdity as we have pointed out, cannot, by any possibility, produce a long article worth reading. We say this in the very teeth of the magnificent assembly which listened to the recital of Mr. Dawes, in the great hall of the University of New York. We shall leave "Athenia of Damascus," without comment, to the decision of those who may find time and temper for its perusal, and conclude our extracts by a quotation, from among the minor poems, of the following very respectable

ANACREONTIC.

Fill again the mantling bowl

Nor fear to meet the morning breaking!