phlet of Dr.Woodville; and various parts of the history are likely soon to be fully investigated. It already appears that several of the facts asserted, relating to the vaccine disorder, are not well founded: but we trust and hope that the principal points will be established, and that the public will ultimately derive much benefit from them.

ART. XIII. Grove-Hill, a Descriptive Poem, with an Ode to Mithra, by the Author of Indian Antiquities. 4to. pp. 76. and many Plates. 1. Is. Boards. Arch. 1799.

WE

E have frequently had occasion to bear testimony to this author's learning, poetical talents, and facility of writing both in prose and verse; and if we have not invariably subscribed to his opinions, nor regarded his works as "faultless monsters," we have never withheld our praise when we thought it due. In particular, we have celebrated his talent for descriptive poetry; and his descriptions, indeed, are not confined to belle parole, but are enriched by knowlege and reflection. We have no local acquaintance with the villa which he now celebrates, and are therefore unable to judge of the likeness of the portrait: but the picture is well designed and highly coloured.

By separating the several characteristic parts of the subject of this poem, apparently for the sake of the elegant wood plates with which it is embellished, it seems rather a collection of portraits, than an historical picture, or complete whole : yet, if the publication had no other merit than that of serving as a vehicle for the admirable engravings in wood with which it is embellished, executed by Anderson +, from designs by Samuel, it would have answered a very laudable purpose. Of these ornaments we cannot give our readers any specimens: but from the poetry we shall present them with an extract or two;. commencing with the well merited and well drawn eulogy of the worthy and excellent Ferguson :

OBSERVATORY, or TEMPLE of the SYEILS.

At length with wonder and delight I gain
The lofty summit of the Sybil's fane.
Now far sublimer scenes the muse inspire,
Sublimer thoughts the kindling bosom fire:
Adieu! earth's bounded range, all meaner themes,

Pear..n.

Gay landscapes, waving woods, and glittering streams:
Be mine with heaven-born Ferguson to soar,

And yon bright arch and brighter orbs explore:

*The seat of Dr. Lettsom, at Camberwell,

An ingenious young artist, who already equals his predecessors in this line, and will probably excel them.

With his rapt spirit round the ecliptic glow,
Oy freeze beneath the bears, in polar snow;
Delighted, through the boundless realms of space,
The great Creator's varied power to trace;
Where gravitating worlds unnumbered sweep
In beauteous order through yon azore deep;
While rapid comets, with their burning trains,
Attend their progress through those distant plains;
Their wasted ardours with new fires supply,
And light the flames that blaze through all the sky.
• How vigorous Geplus, on its eagle-wings,
Above terrestrial bonds triumphant springs!
All the dire rage of adverse fate de fies,
And to its native spheres for refuge fties.
Mark! on yon northern hills, her darling child,
Wand'ring o'er many a bleak and barren wild;
Around him howls enraged the wintry gale,
And driving sleet the illustrious youth assail;
Yet neither driving sleet nor blasting wind
Damp the keen fervour of his active mind,
That scorns the limits of this nether sphere,
And bends to distant worlds its bold career.
Now, with the pastoral crook, his skilful hand
Draws heaven's vast circles in the drifted sand:
Now, with a string of threaded beads, he shows
Where each bright star that gilds th' horizon glows;
Here the broad Zodiac darts its central rays;
Here gleams Orion; there the Pleiads blaze:
There myriad suns their blended beams combine,
To form the Galaxy's refulgent line:
And, as one dazzling food of light they pour,
Bid wondering mortals tremble and adore.

Doom'd still to be the sport of adverse fate, Severer ills his ripening manhood wait : Lo! at the mill, a servile drudge, he tails, In tasks at which the high-born mind recoils; Exhausted through the long laborious day, His mightier labours of the night survey; Those weary lids no balmy slumbers close, No pause that active, ardent spirit knows; But now, upborne on lightning pinions, flies Where tempests gender, and dark whirlwinds rise; In metaphysics now sublimely soars, And wide the intellectual world explores; Or with great Newton in mechanics towers, Invests their secret laws and wonderous powers; Fathoms the billowy ocean's bed profound,

Weighs the vast mass, and marks its mighty bound, At length thy brows the well earned laurels crown, And bright, as lasting, spreads thy just renown. The friend of Genius and its ballowed flame

Devotes this temple to thy towering name;

That long as stars shall shine, or oceans roll,
To kindred zeal shall rouse the aspiring soul."

The APIART, which follows this article, is described with auch poetical imagery:

• Reflected from Augusta's glittering spires,
The sun darts fiercely his meridian fires;

With brighter splendor shines each glistening stream,
While Nature pants beneath the fervid beam.
For shelter, from the sultry dog-star's heat,
To the deep glen the fainting herds retreat;
Listless repose beneath the gloomy brake,
Or headlong plunge amid the cooling lake.
Mark how intensely, while the blazing day
Pours on their glowing hives its fiercest ray,
Yon buzzing tribes pursue their ceaseless toil,
Loaded with all the garden's fragrant spoil;
Darkening the air, behold the unnumbered throng,
In driving swarms, harmonious, glide along;
All in strong bonds of social union join'd,
One mighty empire, one pervading mind:
No civil discords in that empire rage,

Save when on idle drones dire war they wage;
No tyrant's thundering scourge, nor rattling chain,
Disgrace the regent-mother's gentle reign;
Eternal laws to industry incite,

All, all to swell the public stores unite.

Oh! would the mighty states, whose thunders hurľa
O'er ravaged Europe, awe the astonished world,
Oh! would they imitate the blameless race,

Whose numerous hives their names conspicuous grace;
Their vigorous industry, their loyal zeal,
Their generous ardour for the public weal;
Be firmly bound by one grand social chain,
And bid through earth eternal concord reign!'

There seems a small inaccuracy, which we did not expect from so orthodox a writer as Mr. M., in saying, p. 3, that Adam led by his Maker (before the fall) tasted every fruit that decked the paradisaical bower.'

At pp. 7 and 8, the words bound and bounded seem rather too near neighbours. Pope's objection to "the repetition of the same rhymes within four or six lines of each other, as tiresome to the ear through their monotony," is equally cogent with re-spect to blank verse, and to prose; where an important word continues vibrating on the ear during the perusal of at least five or six lines.

Of MITHRA we have formerly spoken with partiality, in vol. xii. p. 251. of our New Series. In this revival of the poem, there is a considerable addition, between the IVth and Vth Stanzas.

--

Act

At p. 63. a small typographical error seems to have escaped the author's care and correction: Diapasan for Diapason and in another place, the word recanted, for rechanted, seems an unusual acceptation. Though to recant comes from recanto, and originally implied a palinody, no one now thinks of singing who recants an opinion.

Besides the uncommon beauty of the engravings, this publication does honour to the typography of our country, by the perfection of the letter-press and paper. Dr B....y.

ART. XIV. The Pleasures of Hope; with other Poems. By Thomas Campbell. Small 8vo. 63. Boards. Edinburgh printed; and sold by Longman, in London. 1799.

IT.
I would be unreasonable to expect, in a poem on this sub-
ject, the same exactness and method which occur in the
Pleasures of Memory, or perhaps in the Pleasures of Imagina-
tion. All that can be done, in delineating the effects of the
passion here described, is to form pleasing groupes, and to
combine them by natural transitions. In one transition, we
think, the present author has been too abrupt: namely, in
passing from the subject which introduces the Episode, to the
Sorrows of Conrad and his daughter. The characteristic style
of the poem is the pathetic, though in some passages it rises
into a higher tone.-It opens with a comparison between the
beauty of remote objects in a landscape, and the anticipation
of remote futurity:

At summer eve, when Heav'n's aerial bow

Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Thus, with delight, we linger to survey
The promis'd joys of life's unmeasur'd way;
Thus, from afar, each dim discover'd scene
More pleasing seems than all the past hath been;
And every form, that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.'

Though there seems to be no settled mode of arrangement adopted in disposing of the successive pictures which constitute the poem, yet there is an evident climax followed out. The march-torn soldier' entering the field of battle is the first description; to which succeeds an allusion to the situation of

the celebrated Commodore Byron *; who, actuated by the influence of anticipation, encountered so many difficulties with exemplary fortitude. A domestic scene is then naturally introduced, in which the influence of Hope on parental affection is well pourtrayed. We give the following specimen of this part of the poem:

Lo! as the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps ;
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her little son with pensive eyes,
And weaves a song of melancholy joy-

66

Sleep, image of thy father, sleep, my boy:
No lingering hour of sorrow shall be thine;
No sigh that rends thy father's heart and mine;
Bright as his manly sire, the son shall be
In form and soul; but ah! more blest than he.
Thy fame, thy worth, thy filial love at last,
Shall soothe this aching heart for all the past.
With many a smile my sorrows shall repay,
And chase the world's ungenerous scorn away.
"And say when summoned from the world and thee
I lay my head beneath the willow tree,

Wilt thou, sweet mourner! at my stone appear,
And soothe my parted spirit ling'ring near?
Oh wilt thou come? at evening hour, to shed
The tears of memory o'er my narrow bed;
With aching temples on thy hand reclin'd,
Muse on the last farewell I leave behind,
Breathe a deep sigh to winds that murmur low,
And think on all my love and all my woe?"
So speaks Affection, 'ere the infant eye
Can look regard, or brighten in reply;
But when the cherub lip hath learnt to claim
A mother's ear by that endearing name;
Soon as the playful innocent can prove
A tear of pity, or a smile of love,
Or cons his murm'ring task beneath her care
Or lisps with holy look his evening pray'r,
Or gazing, mutely pensive, sits to hear
The mournful ballad warbled in his ear;
How fondly looks admiring Hope the while,
At every artless tear, and every smile;
How glows the joyous parent to descry
A guileless bosom, true to sympathy!"

The pictures of the Maniac and the Wanderer are in the same style, but our limits do not permit us to transcribe them.

* For his Narrative, see M. R. vol. xxxix. p. 319.

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