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spectable pursuits. We should feel some hesitation in telling an interesting youth, of any given battalion from Portugal, that he was a furlowed hero,' lest he should prove to us that his furlow' had by no means impaired his heroism.' The old epithet, "war-worn," was more adapted to heroism and to poetry; and, if we mistake not, it has very recently been superseded by an epithet which precludes" otium cum dignitate" from the soldier, without imparting either ease or dignity to the verse. Why is "horse and horsemen pant for breath" changed to heave for breath,' unless for the alliteration of the too tempting aspirate? Heaving' is appropriate enough to coals and to sighs, but panting belongs to successful lovers and spirited horses; and why should Mr. S.'s horse and horseman not have panted as heretofore?

The next poem in arrangement as well as in merit is the "Year of Sorrow;" to which we offered a tribute of praise in our 45th Vol. N.S. p. 288.-We are sorry to observe that the compliment paid to Mr.Wedgewood by a "late traveller," (see note, p. 50.) viz. that "an Englishman in journeying from Calais to Ispahan may have his dinner served every day on Wedgewood's ware," is no longer a matter of fact. It has lately been the good or evil fortune of one of our travelling department to pass near to Calais, and to have journeyed through divers Paynim lands to no very remote distance from Ispahan; and neither in the palace of the Pacha nor in the caravansera of the traveller, nor in the hut of the peasant, was he so favoured as to masticate his pilaff from that fashionable service. Such is, in this and numerous other instances, the altered state of the continent and of Europe, since the annotation of the "late traveller ;" and on the authority of a later, we must report that the ware has been all broken since the former passed that way. We wish that we could efficiently exhort Mr. Wedgewood to send out a fresh supply, on all the turnpike roads by the route of Bagdad, for the convenience of the "latest travellers."

Passing over the "Chorus from Euripides,' which might as well have slept in quiet with the rest of the author's schoolexercises, we come to the Visionary,' which we gladly extract as a very elegant specimen of the lighter poems:

When midnight o'er the moonless skies
Her pall of transient death has spread,
When mortals sleep, when spectres rise,
And nought is wakeful but the dead!

No bloodless shape my way pursues,
No sheeted ghost my couch annoys,
Visions more sad my fancy views,
Visions of long departed joys!

• The

The shade of youthful hope is there,
That linger'd long, and latest died;
Ambition all dissolved to air,
With phantom honours at her side.

What empty shadows glimmer nigh!
They once were friendship, truth, and love!
Oh, die to thought, to mem'ry die,

Since lifeless to my heart ye prove!

We cannot forbear adding the beautiful stanzas in pages

166, 167:

To the Lady ANNE HAMILTON.

Too late I staid, forgive the crime,
Unheeded flew the hours;

How noiseless falls the foot of Time,
That only treads on flow'rs!

• What eye with clear account remarks
The ebbing of his glass,

When all its sands are di'mond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass?

Ah! who to sober measurement
Time's happy swiftness brings,

When birds of Paradise have lent
Their plumage for his wings?'

The far greater part of the volume, however, contains pieces which can be little gratifying to the public:- some are pretty; and all are besprinkled with gems,' and roses,' and 'birds,' and diamonds," and such like cheap poetical adornments, as are always to be obtained at no great expence of thought or of metre. It is happy for the author that these bijoux are presented to persons of high degree; Countesses, foreign and domestic; Maids of Honour to Louisa Landgravine of Hesse D'Armstadt;' Lady Blank, and Lady Asterisk, besides and

> and others anonymous; who are exactly the kind of people to be best pleased with these sparkling, shining, fashionable trifles. We will solace our readers with three stanzas of the soberest of these odes:

• Addressed to Lady SUSAN FINCASTLE, now Countess of Dunmore.

What ails you, Fancy? your'e become
Colder than Truth, than Reason duller!

Your wings are worn, your chirping's dumb,
And ev'ry plume has lost its colour.

You droop like geese, whose cacklings cease
When dire St. Michael they remember,

Or

Or like some bird who just has heard
That Fin's preparing for September?

Can you refuse your sweetest spell
When I for Susan's praise invoke you?
What, sulkier still? you pout and swell

As if that lovely name would choke you.'

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We are to suppose that Fin preparing for September' is the Lady with whose lovely name' Fancy runs some risk of being • choked;' and, really, if killing partridges formed a part of her Ladyship's accomplishments, both Fancy' and Feeling were in danger of a quinsey. Indeed, the whole of these stanzas are couched in that most exquisite irony, in which Mr. S. has more than once succeeded. All the songs to persons of quality' seem to be written on that purest model, "the song by a person of quality;" whose stanzas have not been fabricated in vain. This sedulous imitation extends even to the praise of things inanimate :

When an Eden zephyr hovers
O'er a slumb'ring cherub's lyre,
Or when sighs of seraph lovers
Breathe upon th' unfinger'd wire.'

If namby-pamby still leads to distinction, Mr. S., like Ambrose Phillips, will be "preferred for wit."

Heav'n must hear-a bloom more tender
Seems to tint the wreath of May,
Lovelier beams the noon-day splendour,
Brighter dew-drops gem the spray!
Is the breath of angels moving
O'er each flow'ret's heighten'd hue?
Are their smiles the day improving,
Have their tears enrich'd the dew?'

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Here we have angels' tears,' and breath,' and smiles,' and Eden zephyrs,' sighs of seraph lovers,' and lyres of slumbering cherubs,' dancing away to the Pedal Harp!'- How strange it is that Thomson, in his stanzas on the Aolian lyre, (see the Castle of Indolence) never dreamed of such things, but left all these prettinesses to the last of the Cruscanti !

One of the best pieces in the volume is an Epistle to T. Moore, Esq.,' which, though disfigured with Fiends on sulphur nurst,' and 'Hell's chillest Winter,' (" poor Tom's a'-cold!") and some other vagaries of the same sort, forms a pleasant specimen of poetical friendship.-We give the last ten lines:

The triflers think your varied powers
Made only for life's gala bow'rs,

Το

To smooth Reflection's mentor-frown,
Or pillow joy on softer down.-
Fools!-yon blest orb not only glows
To chase the cloud, or paint the rose;
These are the pastimes of his might,
Earth's torpid bosom drinks his light;

Find there his wondrous pow'r's true measure,
Death turn'd to life, and dross to treasure!'

We have now arrived at Mr. Spencer's French and Italian poesy; the former of which is written sometimes in new and sometimes in old French, and, occasionally, in a kind of tongue neither old nor new. We offer a sample of the two former:

"QU'EST CE QUE C'EST QUE LE GENIE?"

• Brillant est cet esprit privé de sentiment ;
Mais ce n'est qu'un soleil trop vif et trop constant,
Tendre est ce sentiment qu'aucun esprit n'anime,
Mais ce n'est qu'un jour doux, que trop de pluie abime!
Quand un brillant esprit de ses rares couleurs,
Orne du sentiment les aimables douleurs,
Un Phenomêne en nait, le plus beau de la vie!
C'est alors que les ris en se mêlant aux pleurs,
Font cet Iris de l'ame, appellé le Genie!'---

C'y gist un povre menestrel,
Occis par maint ennuict cruel—
Ne plains pas trop sa destinée-
N'est icy que son corps mortel;
Son ame est toujours à Gillwell,
Et n'est ce pas là l'Elysée ?'

We think that Mr. Spencer's Italian rhymes are better finished than his French; and indeed the facility of composing in that most poetical of all languages must be obvious: but, as a composer in Italian, he and all other Englishmen are much inferior to Mr. Mathias. It is very perceptible in many of Mr. S.'s smaller pieces that he has suffere: his English versification to be vitiated with Italian concetti; and we should have been better pleased with his compositions in a foreign language, had they not induced him to corrupt his mother-tongue. Still we would by no means utterly proscribe these excursions into other languages; though they remind us occasionally of that aspiring Frenchman who placed in his grounds the following inscription in honour of Shenstone and the Leasowes:

"See this stone

For William Shenstone-
Who planted groves rural,
And wrote verse natural !"

The

The above lines were displayed by the worthy proprietor, in the pride of his heart, to all English travellers, as a tribute of respect for the resemblance of his paternal chateau to the Leasowes, and a striking coincidence between Shenstone's versification and his own. We do not mean to insinuate that Mr. Spencer's French verses (Cy gist un povre menestrel, with an Urn inscribed W.R.S. at the top,) are precisely a return in kind for the quatrain above quoted: but we place it as a beacon to all young gentlemen of poetical propensities on the French Parnassus. Few would proceed better on the Gallic Pegasus, than the Anglo-troubadour on ours.

We now take our leave of Mr. Spencer, without being blind to his errors or insensible to his merits. As a poet, he may be placed rather below Mr. Moore and somewhat above Lord Strangford; and if his volume meet with half their number of purchasers, he will have no reason to complain either of our judgment or of his own success.

ART. VIII. Poems and Letters, by the late William Isaac Roberts, of Bristol, deceased. With some Account of his Life. Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. Boards. Longman and Co.

1811.

Tappears from this publication not only that the writer of the poems which it contains is deceased, but that, on the eve of his dissolution, he bequeathed them as a legacy to his sister, with all the profit that might accrue from their sale. Criticism would be half disarmed by such an appeal, even were the production possessed of merit that was much inferior to the claims of the present compositions: but these verses are in many instances above mediocrity; and throughout the volume a tone of good and genuine feeling prevails, which we are truly pleased to find exemplified in the author's short but praiseworthy life.

W. J. Roberts was born at Bristol, in the year 1786; and being designed by his parents for trade, he was accordingly educated at a respectable academy in that city. His progress at school was marked by successful emulation, and by no means confined to commercial attainments. In drawing, and in poetry, he displayed an early taste; his passion for the latter accomplishment having been excited (as we well know it has often been in other instances) by "the tale of Troy divine," told in the matchless numbers of that Englishman who, throughout the world, may vindicate his title of "the first of Translators." The young aspirant to poetical honours, however, was destined to the humble drudgery of a clerk in a banking-house; and, entering

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