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of Science, and to lead her votaries How different, and how unpoetifrom the looser analogies that dress cal is the occupation of these nymphs out the imagery of poetry, to the when compared with the fairies of stricter ones, which form the ratio- the Midsummer Night's Dream, or cinations of philosophy." But the with the sylphs in the Rape of the great end of poetry is here forgotten; Lock!-Again,

Canto 1. 85.

we look on, and are dazzled; but we "You bid gold-leaves in crystal lantherns held, have no emotion of any kind. The Approach attracted, and recede repell'd; loves of the plants are wholly differ. While paper nymphs instinct with motion rise, ent from the metamorphoses of Ovid, And dancing fauns the admiring Sage surprise," &c. because, in the latter, the transmu- No one surely, now, will have the tation is merely a secondary object, both in the eyes of the poet, and in the estimation of the reader. Since

of the

effrontery to dispute the axiom
Darwinians, that description consti-
tutes poetry. Again,
"Led by the Sage, lo! Britain's sons shall guide
Huge sea-balloons beneath the tossing tide," &c.
Canto iv. 207.

It appears verily now to be beyond all doubt, that the ancients have exhausted all the subjects capable of poetical embellishment, and that

the heroine or hero must fall off from all intellectual grandeur, and cease to excite all moral sympathy, we are wholly indifferent, if they must be transformed, into what it may be an animal, or a stone, or a plant. We are told, indeed, that Ajax stabbed himself, and that his blood was there is no chance in modern times turned into the violet; but Ovid, of being distinguished in literature, with characteristick sagacitv, previ- or of composing "singularly wild, ously gives us a peep at the assem and original, and beautiful" poetry bled court, and tickles our ears with without being fantastick. We have the shouts of the soldiery, and touch- had poems on the "Loves of the Tries our hearts with the eloquence of angles," and on "Washing Days," the champions, as they relate their and "Ironing Days;" and we do not "hair-breadth 'scapes by flood and despair of yet being delighted with field," and all the important services "The Laws of England, rendered they had rendered to their country. into heroick verse," or "Human

From among a hundred glaring Anatomy Illustrated," in a poem of instances, which we could adduce ten cantos.

from the Botanick Garden, in proofThe parts of the Botanick Garden of our allegations, and of the utter worthy of admiration, are-without unfitness of the subject for poetical delineation, we will only call the attention of the reader to a very few specimens.

"Nymphs! you disjoin, unite, condense, expand,
And give new wonders to the chemist's hand;
On tepid clouds of rising steam aspire,
And fix in sulphur all its liquid fire;
With boundless spring elastick airs unfold,
Or fill the fine vacuities of gold;
With sudden flash vitrescent sparks reveal,
By fierce collision from the flint and steel;
Or mark with shining letters Kunkel's name
In the pale phosphor's self-consuming flame.
So the chaste heart of some enchanted maid
Shines with insidious light, by Love betrayed,
Round her pale bosom plays the young Desire,
And slow she wastes by self-consuming fire."

an exception that strikes us, only those passages that are subsidiary to the main object of the poem, and introduced by way of simile, or for the purpose of illustration. We do not think of the Purple Foxglove, but of Philanthropy and Howard; we do not think of the embryo seeds, but of Herschel and the starry firmament; not of the Carline Thistle, but of the ascent of Montgolfier; not of the Orchis, but of Eliza and the Battle of Minden; and not of the vegetable poisons, but of the desolation of myra!

Pal

As the chief excellence of dramaEconomy of Veget. Canto 1. 223. tick representation is exhibited in "suiting the action to the word," so tiful allegory with some of the chas the principal extrinsick excellence ter graces and peculiar excellencies of poetry consists in "suiting the of his style. It is from the Fourth word to the action;"-but, by the Canto of the Economy of VegetaDarwinian school, this is wholly tion, 189.

O'er Etna's steeps, and Enna's golden plains;

overlooked. Subjects that are na- "So in Sicilia's ever-blooming shade, turally low are artificially exalted, When playful Proserpine from Ceres stray'd, stilted into eminence, and loaded Led with unwary step her virgin trains with epithet and embellishment; Pluck'd with fair hand the silver-blossom'd bower, and, whether lofty or trivial, inter- And purpled mead; herself a fairer flower; esting or repulsive, are clothed, by Sudden, unseen, amid the twilight glade, the same unsparing hand, in the most Rush'd gloomy Dis, and seiz'd the trembling maid.

gaudy and gorgeous colouring, with.
out respect to persons or discrimi-
nation of subject. If a beggar were cries
introduced, it would be in a tattered Pursued the chariot, and invoked the skies ;-
laced coat; and if " a slaughter of Pleased as he grasps her in his iron arms,
horned cattle," he would go through Frights with soft sighs, with tender words alarms,
his operations in a high style, and The wheels descending roll'd in smoky rings,

Her starting damsels sprung from mossy seats,
Dropp'd from their gauzy laps the gather'd sweets,
Clung round the struggling nymph, with piercing

Infernal Cupid's flapp'd their demon wings;
And far in night celestial beauty blaz'd."

Earth with deep yawn received the Fair, amaz'd,

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Bating some of the epithets, we think this very fine indeed; but in how much fewer words, and in what a different manner, does Milton tell the same story!

That fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis
was gather'd."

make a speech. In fact, we are invited to a mere scenick exhibition, a panorama of picturesque and fanciful objects, where we have the soft and the rugged, the Bay of Naples and Loch-Lomond by moonlight, and the Devil's Bridge and the frowning precipices of the Alps expanded before us, without being obliged to encounter the fatigues or difficulties of travel, and where we may be charmed with the puppet mummery of a We shall only add another extract, sea fight, without being exposed to which approaches the confines of the actual dangers of death or capti- sublimity. The idea of the gradual vity. In all the greater poets we extinction of the planetary system is have feeling and fancy combined, too like a passage in Ossian to be aland, though they can look on the together accidental.* He is aposbeauties of Nature with a gifted eye, trophizing the stars, after alluding they are not, by the possession of to the discoveries of Herschel.

this capacity, excluded from penetrating into the secrets of the inner man, and from describing the wonders of the intellectual world. Here, however, every thing is material, and nothing spiritual; all is addressed to the eye or to the ear; the heart is never touched, nor the affections called into play, nor the passions awakened from the dreamless lethargy of torpor and tranquillity.

The following specimen we think highly characteristick of Darwin's finer manner, as it combines a beau

"Roll on, ye stars! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach,
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
star after star from heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,

* " Have thy sisters fallen from heaven? Are they

who rejoiced with thee at night no more? Yes! they have fair light! and thou dost oft retire to mourn. But thou thyself shalt fail one night, and leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars will then lift their green heads; they who are ashamed in thy

presence will rejoice." Dar-thula.

Since we have pointed out a seeming imitation of Darwin's, it is but justice to add, that the concluding temblance to some passages in the above extrast.

Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall,
And death, and night, and chaos, mingle all!
-Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same."

Ec. of Veg. c. 4. 371.

embroidered ribbon, and a gold cincture about her waist, and a scarf of purple thrown over her shoulders. You expect to find the dignified majesty and serene countenance of Minerva, and you are introduced to the luxurious court of the Queen of Paphos. How similar is the Dar

In the style of the Botanick Garden, we find much to praise, and a great deal to censure. No poet in winian, and yet how unlike in realiour language-not even Dryden ex- ty to the exquisite modulation of the cepted-has given such an extent of style of Campbell, which rises and modulation to the heroick couplet,- falls with the subject; now sinking or rung upon the same specified with the melancholy accents of grief, quantity of syllables, such a variety and now soaring on the wings of imof changes. But there is little de- passioned eloquence; lofty and low licacy or nicety of discrimination by fits, like the breeze-borne sound evinced in the selection, or in the of the cataract, or like the night arrangement of the materials, for wind dallying with the chords of an the production of this effect. As is Eolian lyre!

too frequently the case with those To conclude: We have no wish who are denominated, technically, to depreciate Darwin; all that we fine singers, the sense is made whol- wanted to show was, that he is but a ly subservient to the sound; they sectary in poetry; for a poet, as he are not very solicitous about your is one of the oracles of Nature, must being acquainted with the tenour of speak, in a common language, on a the sentiment, provided they can subject interesting to the fancy and charm you with the melody of the affections. If he has pathos without tones. Every thing is overloaded imagination, he is not a master in the with ornament; and where you ex- art; and, if he has this latter qualipect to find internal beauty, you too fication without feeling, his title to frequently discover that it is merely that rank is equally deficient. Darthe dazzling glitter of the drapery. win displays no intensity of emotion, When a Grecian matron is brought and intimate acquaintance with the before you, instead of beholding the latent springs of human conduct; robes of snowy white, and the ele- but, in the mechanical structure of gance of simplicity, you have her verse, and the powers of description, cheeks bedaubed with rouge, and her he has few superiours within the ringlets filleted up by means of an range of British poetry.

REVIEW.-LIFE OF FRANKLIN. [Concluded from p. 39.]

From the Edinburgh Magazine, for April, 1818.

Μ.

TT was about this time that Frank- his life, with all the energy of his lin conceived the bold and arduous character. His catalogue of the virproject of arriving at moral perfec- tues comprised thirteen different artion. "I wished to live," he says, ticles, with a precept appended to " without committing any fault at each; but his plan was to confine any time, and to conquer all that his attention to those that stood either natural inclination, custom, highest on the list in the first inor company, might lead me into." stance, and then to proceed to the He set about this hopeless task, and others in a very orderly manner. resumed it at different periods of To each virtue he appropriated a

page of a book, divided in a tabular neighbobrs, may console himself by form, by seven upright lines for the a very easy process of self decepdays of the week, and crossed by tion, when he comes to make up the thirteen lines for the virtues which balance sheet in his own private were marshalled on the left. The leger, All such schemes have infaults of every day were marked in deed a tendency to produce this selfthe proper square by a black spot. deception in ordinary minds. BeIt turns out, however, that he found fore a register of this kind can be himself " incorrigible with respect of any real utility, we must first be to order;" and may, therefore, be able to distinguish what is virtue suspected of sometimes omitting the and vice in every combination of proper entries in this singular leger circumstances, with as much prompof vice and virtue. To this artifice titude and certainty as we hope to he ascribes the happiest effects; yet be enabled, by means of a recent init is so difficult, or rather impossible, vention, to distinguish the precious to fix the boundaries between some stones from one or another, and of these thirteen virtues, and be- from all artificial imitations of them. tween each of them and the corres- The next twenty-five years of ponding vice, that, in most cases, Franklin's life present so great a there is reason to fear, great errours diversity of scenes of business, phiwould be committed in the records losophy, and politicks, as to defy of the most cautious and experienc- any thing like abridgment. Even ed, especially when it is considered to name all the parts in which he that the decision must be pronounc- acted during this period, would exed, in most cases, by a single judge ceed the bounds of such an article acting, as he unavoidably must act, as this. We find him instructing on partial views, and influenced by his townsmen how to keep their the natural bias of his own mind streets clean, save their fuel by or peculiar situation. Virtue and means of a stove which he invented, vice, in truth, are not commodities and their time and money by the that can be measured, or weighed, proverbs of Poor Richard; and, at or estimated by figures. Mankind the same time, he was making the are pretty much agreed only re- most wonderful discoveries in a garding a few cardinal virtues, and field the least accessible to science; even of these the practice occasions and while he raised and commanda great diversity of opinion. The ed a military force, made treaties second virtue in Franklin's list is with the Indians, and, as a member Silence, followed by this precept, of the Legislature, keenly opposed "Speak not but what may bene- the claim of the proprietors to an fit others or yourself; avoid trifling exemption from assessments for the conversation;"-a very good rule, defence of the country, --he was no doubt, but who is to settle the founding hospitals, universities, and question which it involves? and meeting-houses for all sects, without what virtue is there in that silence being attached to any. Amidst all which may be the offspring of pride these labours, he very gravely sat or stupidity? At least the half of down to the study of languages, all the thirteen are equally indefi- beginning with French, Italian, and nite. The coward and the brave Spanish, and ending, it would apmay alike claim the virtue of resolu- pear, with the Latin, an order of tion, the miser and the prodigal that proceeding which is inverted, and, of frugality, and so on; and a per- as he thinks, very injudiciously, in son the most singularly deficient in the education of youth. The disvirtuous habits, in the opinion of his pute between the Governour and

the Assembly rose at last to such a der great difficulties and discourage height, that he was appointed by the ment. On the 3rd of September latter as their agent to go to England 1783, his country took its place and support their cause, where he among independent nations by the arrived in 1757. The autobiographi- signature of the definite treaty of cal portion of the work terminates peace at Paris; and in 1785 he set at this period; during the rest of out on his return home to pass the the narrative, though Franklin is al- few years that yet remained to him, ways the most prominent object, with a larger fund of happiness in yet he seems to be so different a the recollection of a long life of person from that with whom we usefulness, and in the gratitude of have been so delighted hitherto, so his countrymen, than any other man enveloped in the mist of political perhaps ever possessed. He retired disputes, and the narrative itself is wholly from publick life in 1788. so often broken with letters and Three weeks before his death he speeches, and unreadable State Pa- wrote in the newspapers a lively pers, and the meanness of the great and ingenious article against those and the follies of the wise, that it is who defended slavery, for the abolihardly possible to conceive a more tion of which he had been a strong striking contrast in biographical advocate. He died on the 17th composition, than the two grand April, 1790, at the age of 84 years divisions of these Memoirs exhibit. and 3 months.

From 1757 till 1775, Franklin The chief qualities of Franklin's resided chiefly in England as agent style seem to be simplicity, perspifor the Colonies. In that period he cuity, and conciseness. He is never visited Scotland, when the degree tedious or confused, and seldom of Doctor of Laws was conferred condescends to use the flowery lanon him by the Universities of St. guage of fiction, even when he emAndrews and Edinburgh. In 1776 ploys fictitious personages. Epihe travelled in Holland and in Ger- thets and superlatives do not bound many, and in 1769 visited Paris, so much in his writings as in those and was every where received with of our times, and he is almost as the greatest respect, his Letters on sparing of metaphors and figuraElectricity having rendered his name tive expressions as Swift himself. famous through all Europe. In 1775 Though less polished than that of he made his fourth and last voyage Addison, Franklin's style is never to Europe, at the age of 70, in feeble or diffuse, nor is it ever circumstances very different from stained by the occasional coarseness those in which he first visited the and exaggeration of Swift's, which it British shores by the advice of Sir most resembles perhaps, in a grave, William Keith, 52 years before. easy tone of humour and fiction, as He was sent to Paris as Minister well as in closeness and energy. Plenipotentiary, to negociate the But we shall enable the reader to independence, and to find the means judge for himself by one or two exof securing the liberty of America, tracts.

in the jealousy of two of the most Besides the obstructions thrown arbitrary powers of Europe, against in the way of raising the necessary the oppression of the only country supplies during war, by the refusal on the globe which then enjoyed of the proprietary governours to freedom. At Passy, in the neigh- allow the estates of their constibourhood of Paris, he resided about tuents to bear any part of the bureight years and a half, discharging den, which, as we have already the most laborious duties, often un- noticed, was the occasion of much

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