department, in amending the morals of the black inhabitants, in increasing the quantity of timber, and in short in every way in which extensive knowlege and a happy ardour for public improvement could have scope in the situation which he filled.

The author concludes with several suggestions for the farther improvement of the island. He considers its retention as of great importance to us, although we remain in possession of the Cape; the anchorage at St. Helena being far preferable, because no wreck is ever known to have occurred there, except one, which happened on the day of its first discovery.

We have perused this volume with considerable satisfaction; and in those passages in which our gratification has been interrupted, the fault was not in the execution. Mr. Brooke's language is so generally correct, that we do not recollect any phrase which demands remark, except the following in page 211. Few are inclined to exertion when the object tends to the advantage of public posterity, rather than to immediate individual benefit.'-It is to be regretted that the book did not contain a map of the island, in addition to the perspective view of an interior scene, which forms a frontispiece.

ART. V. Blackheath; a Poem, in Five Cantos; Lumena, or the Ancient British Battle; and various other Poems, including a Translation of the first Book of the Argonautica of C. Valerius Flaccus. By T. Noble. 4to. l. 118. 6d. Boards. Richardзon, &c.

WE VE do not often meet with a volume of poetry, on which we feel justified in bestowing so much commendation as the present. The first and principal composition in the book is in blank verse, and chiefly resembles the style and manner of Thomson. Being almost wholly didactic, however, on that account it appears to us in some degree to want interest; since, though abstract ideas and general topics of reflection may be extremely well expressed, and though a great variety of them may be brought together, it is to the portraits of human Beings, to the clucidation of human characters, and most of all to the natural description of human actions, that we look for subjects of the most lively and permanent interest. Johnson once remarking that Shakspeare's description of Dover cliffs was the grandest and most affecting instance of the natural sublime in the English language, one of his hearers mentioned the speech of Almeria among the tombs in the first Act of The Mourning Bride, as equalling it in grandeur

and gloomy horror. The Critic paused a moment, and then remarked that Shakspeare's picture contained a human figure"Half way down

Hangs one that gathers Samphire ;"

which was wanting in the other, and that therefore Shakspeare was to be preferred. It is precisely in the use of this. beauty that our great dramatist, more than any poet in the world, and Thomson, more than any poet of his class, are admirable. Both of them can paint inanimate nature in the justest colours, and both can embody the perceptions and reflections of the mind in the best and most appropriate language: but they know how inferior is the interest excited by such subjects, to that which we feel in the contemplation of our own nature; and they generally display their art in making the former subservient only to the latter.

Poems, of the same nature with that which we are now criticizing, being supposed to be written as the author rambles. through the country, in course we expect that he will describe the fields and the hedges; with the grass and the corn which enliven and enrich the one, and the wild roses and thorns which adorn the other; and that, as he walks alone, he will tell us much of what passes in his mind: but, at the same time, we hope to hear a little of the people whom he meets. Even in solitary and contemplative walks, we are always pleased at the interruption of our reveries if a pretty milkmaid, or a groupe of clean and rosy looking peasants, rouse our attention in passing; or if we have the opportunity of observing practically the difference of "before" and "after," by seeing the rustic lover attentively hand his nymph over even the lowest and the easiest stile, or the clownish husband turn his back on his wife, and leave her to tumble as she can over the roughest and most aukward of these barriers. All walks, it is true, do not afford the same sources of amusement; and perhaps no one could be chosen in which human beings are less picturesque and poetical, than that in which Mr. Noble has laid the scene of his poem. Few but the rich and gaudy citizens, or the wretched and squalid mechanics of the metropolis, are to be found in its vicinity. A highwayman, indeed, might be encountered, and highwaymen are a very good sort of people for a poet, (at least in the estimation of Mr. Pratt, author of The Highwayman's Soliloquy, and Mr. Southey, author of the Botany-Bay Eclogues :-but Mr. Noble has fortunately met with none of these gentry. We are therefore obliged to contemplate him alone in his ramble, and hear him describe the country through which he passes, together with the

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ideas

ideas of his own mind; and we will do him the justice to say that, under these circumstances, he is an elegant, well-informed, and agreeable companion. As a specimen of his didactic powers, we would quote the address to Independance, at the opening of the 4th Canto: but his picture of the old sailor, watching the ship, in which he had served, coming up the river to be broke up at Deptford, will be more entertaining. It is very happily conceived; and in the execution of it the author does not, in our opinion, fall short of the best passages in Thomson:

Pensive beneath yon solitary elm,

An aged seaman sits :-fixed is his eye
On the refulgent stream that flows below,
Where the rich radiance, an impervious mist
Of brilliant light, plays on the sparkling waves,
And with suffusive lustre veils the scene.
His only arm o'ershades his aching sight,
That pierces, anxious, thro' the dazzling air,
And rests upon its object (scarcely seen,
Yet known to the best feelings of his heart)
The vessel that he fought in from his youth:-
She, on whose deck he often joined the shout
Of battle and of victory,-she, whose sides
Enclosed the field of all his manly force,
The scene of all his friendships :-not a plank
But bears some mark of blood, which once he loved!

On this side, by the foremost cannon, fell

His own right arm, when in pursuit she spread

Her crouded sails, and on the dastard foe

Bore down Britannia's thunder.

Slowly now,

She drifts up heavily upon the tide:
As when an eagle, wounded in 'mid air,
On languid pinions motionless awhile,
Floats on the aerial current, so she moves,
A shattered burden on those very waves,
That often with their sparkling spray have kissed
Her welcome prow, and, resonant, have dashed
Their silvery spume against her rapid sides.
But ah, more swift than when the courted gales
Savelled her expanded canvas, does the mind
Of this poor mariner retrace her course
On distant oceans by the tempest driven
He braves the mountain billows, or, involved
In all the dreadful dissonance of fight,
Rends down the colours of the boarded foe!
On his rough brow Remembrance fondly gleams:
His brightened cheek thro' all its wrinkles smiles:
While frequent 'cross his eye, his moistened sleeve
Drawn hastily, wipes off some starting tear.'

The episode of the ruined farmer, in the 4th Canto, will be found equally well executed; and we only regret that we have not more passages of the same nature, and fewer of the didactic. The episode in the 5th Canto is too long and common-place, and wants interest.

Lumena, the next poem in the volume, although not so long nor so various as the first, is in our judgment greatly superior to it in poetical merit. The design appears to be well suited to Mr. Noble's powers; which qualify him, we think, to excel more on subjects in which a vigorous and spirited mode of expression can be used, than on those in which tenderness and pathetic simplicity are required. Lumena is the wife of Carwellyn, a chief of the Iceni; and, according to the custom of the times, she goes to the field with her husband, who falls fighting by her side. The songs of the bards celebrating the warriors who die in the battle, and of Lumena describing the glory and death of Carwellyn, with her own exertions first to save him and afterward to rescue his body from the enemy, (which are well connected with passages of description and narration,) form the principal topics of the poem. It opens with Carwellyn's address to Lumena, and to soldiers; and then follows a description of the battle, which we extract. We certainly meet with nothing better of the kind in the Bard or in Marmion :

''Twas thus, amid the ICENIC bands,
With throbbing heart and upraised hands,
CARWELLYN spake :-his beauteous bride,
LUMENA, prest his ardent side.

Her eyes, where love and glory burn'd,
Their brilliant fires upon him turn'd,

And, while he spake, with heightening glow,
She pointed, eager, towards the foe.

When two proud streams their course incline,
And near a precipice conjoin,
High swoln their waves united roll,
They foam, impatient of controul,
The opposing rock in fragments tear,
And the black pines, uprooted, bear;
So fierce, impetuous, on their foes,
This double tide of valour Aows.
LUMENA shook the rattling reins;

The ensanguined wheels foam'd o'er the plains:
The dead were crushed 'mid seas of gore;
Their rapid scythes the gasping bore:
And, followed by vindictive ghosts,
They hurry, where the thickening hosts,
Confused, like some impervious cloud,
Thundered, 'mid dust and darts, aloud.

As, when, by night, rude blasts rush forth,
Armed with the terrors of the North,
Unseen destruction strews the ground,
Promiscuous ruins crash around,
And mingled horrors, with dismay,
Oppress the rising, trembling, day
So raged the battle, horror veil'd;

Death's night, with deepening shades, prevail'd;
Demons, enrobed in vapours, stood.
Quaffing new streams of human blood:
While Devastation's furious mien,
Warriors, and clashing cars, between,
Here, amid hurtling arrows rose,
There, with the javelin, gleaming woes,
Flashed quick across the groaning plain,
Doubling, with varied deaths, the slain.
ANDATE, Conquest's awful form,
Like the red lightening, 'mid the storm,
Moves on her rapid, rustling, plumes,
A meteor 'mid the battle's glooms:
With shouts that shake the bursting skies,
Ten thousand Ghosts around her rise;
And, as her wide wings rush along,
Behind her spreads the gleamy throng,
Anxious, while she, with wavering wreath
Suspended o'er the hosts beneath

In doubtful hesitation, bends

Now here,-now there ;-at length, descends
Where the ICENI, dreadful, spread
Their wide pursuit o'er heaps of dead;
Hurl deaths o'ertaking those who fly,
Join groans with shouts of victory.'

Of Mr. Noble's miscellaneous and smaller pieces, we cannot speak in terms of equal commendation. Indeed, they are all below mediocrity.-We are sorry, also, that he has spent his time in translating the Argonautica; a composition which, to say the best of it, holds but an inferior rank among the remains of Latin poetry. Yet we are ready to acknowlege that many parts of it possess considerable merit,—especially of that sort which Mr. Noble, from the bent of his own genius, is the most likely to admire; we mean, such merit as consists in elevated and sonorous expression: but, really, the Fleece is so stale that it is difficult to endure it ;-and we cannot forbear smiling when we find the translator comparing his author to Virgil. In a preface of considerable length, Mr. Noble dwells on the importance attached to the Argonautic expedition, and details some of the theories which have been formed to explain the story; such as that it was typical of the

Goddess of Victory, among the antient Britons.

earliest