Where angels err, it is surely pardonable for mortals to step aside. We hope, therefore, it will excite neither sneers nor surprise in the reader, when we inform him that Oscar and Roscrana, our hero and heroine, were both so very beautiful, that they mistook each other for celestial beings, and paid mutual obeisance accordingly. Roscrana, thinking Oscar, no doubt, some Irish tutelary deity, though his highland cap might have put her right in that particular, exclaims,

"O god of this sequester'd place!

O genius of my native woods!
Avert the splendours of thy face,

And pardon her who thus intrudes!"

Oscar's return to this sufficiently evinces his politeness:

"Ah! rather from my wond'ring gaze,
Bright angel turn thy charms away!
(The youth replied in sweet amaze,

With one rapt look of tranc'd delay.")

But a longer parley, and a little closer approximation, removes all this misapprehension, and convinces them that they are only carthly angels-a discovery which inspires a more natural as well as more common kind of worship, and leads Roscrana to relate her history and her lover's danger. Her father, we are given to understand, who

"once, 'mid Erin's wars, Unrivall❜d bore the hero's name,' 99

being at last vanquished by "Earl Phelim," a Scottish chieftain, had, since that event, lived only to evince his hatred to the Scottish plume, by murdering every Highlander whom shipwreck or other accident placed within his power. She concludes her dismal tale by warning "her first, her only love," to fly from the fate that awaits him. But Oscar, who is either too much of the knight-errant or Mahometan to think of parting with such a pretty talisman, rejects this counsel with disdain, entreats her to accompany him in his flight, and conquers every scruple by giving a poetical picture of the happiness of the Highlands, and the pleasure of sleeping upon heaps of balmy heath. We are, we confess, no way surprised that Oscar prevails in this laconic courtship; but we really experience something like that feeling, upon hearing the man, who has been all along represented as one dropped from the clouds in a far country, telling his new-found mistress,

"Where frown those rocks o'er ocean's bed,
My voice shall one tall bark command;
Soon will her whitening sails be spread,
To waft us to my native land."

He boasts, however, no more than he is able to perform. By means of a bark he conveys his earthly lover almost as quickly to Caledonia as his aërial one had brought him from it. The lovers being thus safely landed, we hear of nothing now, but "embraces," "congratulations,"" Oscar's calm abode," "Glencarron's green retreat," with a vast variety of sweet et ceteras, and therefore fully expect that the trials and troubles of these faithful lovers are now at an end. But, alas! the lovers might as well think of cheating old Time, and living for ever, as escaping from the clutches of Miss Porter's hobgoblins. No sooner have Oscar and Roscrana retouched terra firma, and banished their sea-sickness by inhaling the breath of the balmy heather, than, horrid to relate,

"While round him now her arms are spread,

She sees his crimson colour fade;
His bright eyes close; in silence dread,
He falls before the trembling maid!

"A strange loud laugh of horrid joy,
Wild through that lonely region rings;
Roscrana turns her startled eye,

But only hears the rush of wings.

"Pale, tearless, with cold clasped hands,
Where still and pale her Oscar lies,
Awhile in mute despair she stands,

Then freed from earth her spirit flies!"

Thus ends "The Maid of Erin"-a tale which, in point of absurdity, extravagance, and incongruity, will yield to nothing that ever was printed or written, and which, though it may amuse and amaze the nursery, will disgust ever reader of taste whose patience permits him to peruse it.

The next "Ballad Romance" is entitled the "Prince of the Lake," for no other reason we can discover, than that the hero's steed was

"Formed of the foaming surf

Which swells on Killarney's lake,

When the furious blast its waters casts,
And rocking turrets shake."

This tale is enveloped in sublime obscurity; and it was not, therefore, without straining our faculties to more than an ordi

nary pitch, that we were able to make out the following particulars. Some lord, being slain in some battle, no sooner feels his spirit freed from his body, than he commands some fellowphantom to mount the above-mentioned steed, and bring to him his wife. At first we thought it would have been more proper for this personage to have gone the errand himself; but, upon recollecting he was a lord, we saw the propriety of his sending an ambassador. This aërial messenger and his journey are thus described:

"The man was clad in a mantle of red,

And his bonnet was large and dark;

So musing still he gain'd the hill,
The lady's bower to mark."

"But the lady bright on the battlements' height,
He saw by the shining moon;

From her locks so bright, and her garments white,
The stranger knew her soon.

"Ho! Lady Anne, thou must come down,

Thy husband sends by me:

Near the cross of stone, on the heath alone,

He lies and waits for thee."

The Lady Anne, after many earnest inquiries concerning the fate of her husband, having mounted behind the ghostly messenger on his steed of "foaming surf"

"They ride o'er hill, they ride o'er vale,
They ride thro' the groaning wood,
Till, by the glare of the lightning pale,
They see the holy rood."

The lady having alighted, the phantom points to the dead body of her husband, and tells her that his own lies interred beneath a neighbouring shade; after which the poem, and a most mysterious rhapsody, are concluded with these words—

"He spoke, and clasp'd his arms to grasp
The form of that lady fair;

She breath'd a moan, and her spirit alone,

Now wanders with his through the air."

The structure of this agency is certainly exemplary for its daring altitude; but we must beg to notice a slight incongruity in it, which we do not remember to have observed in any other supernatural legend. Nothing, we believe, is more common in

the gambols of ghosts and fairies, than for a being formed of air to prance on the wind, or ride upon clouds; but, until the Prince of the Lake was introduced to our acquaintance, we never met with so positive an instance of these etherial personages being able so far to volatilize a living piece of mortality as to take it along with them in their unearthly frolics: and we most reverently protest, that, without the magical assistance of Miss Anna Maria Porter, we never could have devised so marvellous a plan as that of saddling and bridling a Killarney surge-giving the reins and spurs to a goblin shadow-making flesh and bones mount behind, and clasp and cling to this intangible jockey—and then despatching the said surge, ghost, and lady fair, upon a round gallop for the holy rood.

But we must apologize to our readers for obtruding such nonsense upon their attention, and assure them that nothing but respect for the name of Miss Porter, and the influence it may have with some readers, could have induced us to analyze poems every way so unworthy of the author. Indeed it is not easy to conceive what she proposes to herself by penning such marvellous trash. Few, if we except children, can derive any thing like pleasure from half-versified accounts of ghosts and hobgoblins. Even those whose romantic imaginations can be pleased, or rather surprised, on the first perusal of such writings, will, if we mistake not, feel something like loathing at the second. Simplicity is the soul of poetry, and nothing can be permanently pleasing which is not natural.

It is almost superfluous to add, that we have derived little pleasure and no instruction from the perusal of Miss Porter's poetry, and would have slumbered long before we reached that welcome resting-place Finis, had not conscience held over our heads the rod of public duty. Had this been the production of one who never wrote any thing else, we would have spoken differently, had we spoken at all; and if we have been severe, it is because we regret to see an author of established reputation lowering and impairing it by publishing such trifles. The public is jealous of its favourites, and will not allow those to rest at mediocrity who can rise to excellence. When authors have once begun to scale the steeps of fame, they should never stop to look behind them; retrograde motions are doubly dangerous upon

eminences.

ORIGINAL.

SIR,

THE GENUINE BOOK.

To the Editor of the Analectic Magazine.

I HAVE been very much interested by the perusal of a work which has lately made its appearance in this country, and has already passed through two editions, in consequence, no doubt, of the serious and important information which it contains. From the peculiar excellence of this volume, it is denominated" The Genuine Book," by way of distinguishing it from all other books that has ever been written. It contains a very interesting fragment of private history about a certain royal family, which I shall not name, as I wish to be at least as delicate as my neighbours on this subject. The purport of the story appears to be as follows:

There was once upon a time a young princess, daughter of a sovereign prince, who lived very happily and reputably at her father's court, enjoying all those distinctions and honours which are usually bestowed on young princesses. When arrived at a proper age, she was married, according to the manner that roy. al marriages are conducted, by proxy, to a neighbouring prince, the heir apparent of a mighty kingdom. On arriving in the country of her husband, she was received by him with great courtesy and politeness; insomuch that the newspapers teemed with eulogiums on his deportment; for whenever a prince says or does a civil thing, such as ordinary men say and do a dozen times a day, the newspapers always take care to make honourable mention of it; from which many have been led to suppose that it is an extraordinary thing for a prince to be civil or witty.