is evidently felt by the poet; for although he represents spring, summer, and autumn as the mere envoys of Time, he adduces Winter as Time's ally, or rather substitute, to be in its turn superseded by Pestilence and Fever; and such are the modes and results of this motley agency, that the reader concludes the passage about as wise as he began it. We shall give it all, and mark the especially enigmatical parts by Italics; hoping that some of our readers may be more fortunate than we have been in attaching to them a meaning.

"As fast and forward flies his car,
His ministers the Seasons are;
If now he sends the Spring with dew
Earth's flowery borders to renew,
Summer, with sunbeam and with
song,

To lead the dance of life along,
And viny Autumn's horn to call
Guests to his gorgeous festival,-
It is but with a smile to gild
The ruin which his wrath has willed.
Soon tyrant Winter's whirlwinds urge
Th' assault of earthquake, cloud, and
surge;

And pestilence and fever's flame
Suck up the breath, or fire the frame.
The rich sun of delight goes down
In his annihilating frown,
And we but add-of things destroyed,
One atom to the mighty void.
Thus, unregretted, let decay
Our mortal reliques roll away,
To where the wrecks of ages sleep
Unconscious in th' eternal deep;

The glorious Soul its power shall mock:

Whirled into whiteness round the
rock,

That pearl of pearls shall issue bright
A gem of love, a drop of light,
By Mercy's smile from its abode
Drawn to instar the throne of God!
Sorrow and trial in all time
Assault the spirit to sublime ;
Even from our very virtues spring
Thoughts which the heart with an-
guish wring;

Of one so chastened, one whose love
Was such as angels feel above;
Of one who, thus by anguish tried,
O'er him she could not succour,
died,-

My lute in pity would essay
To frame a melancholy lay,
For never yet were wept or told
Truths sad as those its strings un-
fold."

The four last lines are quite melancholy. Some not very striking allusions to ancient Rome and Romans follow; and we cannot help thinking that the author weakens Roman names, by loving to give the whole, like the good Vicar. Junius Brutus, for example, reads very feebly in a high sounding verse.

The poet describes with some spirit, the Helvetian Province of Rome, and does justice to the brave Alpinulus, and his love for the pride of his life, the innocent Julia. Yet he seldom fails to spoil his description by some extravagance. Thus, he calls Julia her father's

flower of innocence and love, That drew the sunshine down from Jove." Again, if Julia had not been, in baby language, called a "fairyshape, a spotless thing," nor predicated to have been "familiar with the face sublime of universal Pan," her description has considerable merit.

"Pure as the morning's virgin dew Falling upon the vines of spring, In blest seclusion Julia grew,

A fairy shape-a spotless thing. Her home she deemed a little heaven; She had heard nought of crime and

sorrow,

Save in her father's tales at even,

And their remembrance had no

morrow.

Till thoughts maturer fixed a trace
Of pensiveness on her sweet face,
And then, as to his neck she clung,
With curious, fond, familiar tongue,
Much would she question of the scar

Which his sagacious forehead bore,
And of the nodding plumes of war,
And why those nodding plumes he

wore,

Then wonder at the acts of men, And pause, and think, and ask again." Julia is then described in her sacerdotal character, and, bating a recurrence of the same faults, well described. The author positively must not repeat his words, as he is fond of doing, when nothing comes of that mistaken emphasis.

Again,

"Thro' ruin still exists, that token,
"Tho' fate the cup has broken, broken!"

"But I, whate'er may be your lot,

"In chains will never, never rot."

We have also "Oh all alone! Oh all alone!"-a match for "Oh, Sophonisba! Sophonisba, oh!"

Then follows a very singular effect of a clean well polished sword, whose brightness, it seems, protected it from the tarnish of rust, and moreover raised the dead.

"There's brightness on my single sword
"To keep its keen edge free from rust,
"And light our fathers from the dust."

All this is absolute absurdity. Julia's prayer to her virgin goddess is fine; but we pass a great deal, to extract, in justice to the author, the following description of the field after a battle, which, in spite of an average share of his besetting sins, of random words and bad measure, is certainly fine. "The thunder has its lull from riot, The morning storm its evening quiet; The raving and rebellious Ocean, Its crystal calm, its rest from motion; The avalanche its silence, when That thundering ball has rocked the glen;

The purple Simoom its light tread
When prostrate Caravans lie dead;
The earthquake its still under-tone,
Its whisper of the murders done.
And battle-which in the wide fall
Of nations blends the rage of all,
Its hush of passions, and the sleep
Of energies once strong and deep.
The earthquake-shout which shook
yon hill

Of pines, is over; all is still;
VOL. V. NO. 1.

Save the cry of the shrill gale,
Sad as a shrieking spirit's wail;
Save the wild birds' flapping wings,
Now fluttering over lifeless things;
Save the lone gush of mountain-
springs;

And clamour of cascades that

leap

Stainless from their aerial steep,
But rolling redly from the plain
Where lie the Proud and Mighty

slain :

Rigid and nerveless every hand, That grasped the battle-axe and brand;

Pallid each brow; each glazed eye

set,

But scowling fierce defiance yet;

I

The fiery heart of former years,
With all its wishes, hopes, and fears,
Its pride its pain-its might-its
mirth-

A pulseless ball of wasting earth;
The plume and scarf by Beauty wo-

ven,

Daggled in blood; the helmet cloven;

The pennons proud, of yesterday
Borne by the gallant and the gay,
In life's last agony resigned,
Forlornly waving in the wind:-
Another's harp may bear away
The blazon of that fierce affray,
But, Freedom! I will never show
Thy dread anatomy of woe."

The following, with much inexcusable bathos, has a few lines like Byron; who, by the way, is evidently Mr. Wiffen's idolwe recalled the word model.

song

From horn, or harp, or cymbalon,
Done deeds which might the lion

shame,

And make the nations pale to name.

For Priests, their mitres are thy

mirth,

Thy panders are the kings of earth:
From their high Pagods dost thou

come

Charioted, with the hideous hum
Of thousands, who, where'er it reels,
Perish beneath thy waggon wheels:
When given the groaning death they
ask,

Thy visage thou dost then unmask,
Like the Veiled Fiend of Khorrassan,
And on thy wolfish brow we scan
The thunder-graven mark of Cain,
Heaven's warning impress, stamped
in vain ;

Eyeballs that act the Gorgon's part, A hydra's head, a viper's heart, The penal fire around whose core, Shall redly burn for evermore!" We beg to substitute the tiger for the lion, for which last we are certain even a London jury would find a verdict of libel. A hair's-breadth, Mr. Wiffen would do well to keep in mind, is the boundary between the sublime and the ludicrous. He is perpetually stumbling over it. The next passage after the last quotation, commences with this high vituperation to naughty War. "Heaven's angry angel pour wrath on thee, War! "Ambition and cruelty harness thy car," &c.

Cecina is described in the poem, we believe without historical sanction, as yielding to the prayer of Julia, and affecting to spare Alpinus; but his wishes are known to the knights, and the patriot is dispatched as he goes out. The description of Julia's short survivancy, we consider exquisite. We give but a few lines of it.

"A little sense of former dread;
A little thought of what is dead;
A little numbering up the sum
Of das that darken ere they come;
A suden flash through memory's
night

That all her reasonings are not right;
A little tracing round and round

The spot where anguish struck the

wound;

A trance-a vigil—and a fit—
O'er the cold tomb she cannot quit;
And all beside is wasting flame,
The bloodless lip, the sleepless frame,
So meek, so wan, so passive, death
Has nought of stillness to bequeath."

Julia's closing scene, for which we refer to the poem, is in good taste, and remarkable for its pathos.

There are some other poems in the volume, the largest of which is called " the Captive of Stamboul!" by an anachronism of nearly 300 years. It is founded on the sirgular story of Andronicus, the younger brother of John Comnenus, who was imprisoned by the emperor Manuel twelve years in a lofty tower of the palace of Constantinople. Finding a small hole in the wall of his cell, he gradually widened it, till he could creep through into a dark and deep recess beyond. Here he concealed himself, having replaced the bricks, so that there was no trace of the mode of his disappearance. His mysterious escape was imputed to his beautiful wife Eudora, who was imprisoned by the tyrant in the very cell lately occupied by her husband. In the dead of night, he revealed himself to his first horrified, but soon enraptured wife. The poem concludes with the fictitious, and therefore injudiciously imagined incident of their liberation by two Venetian knights, who scaled their tower from a bark which they brought immediately under it. Had we read this poem first, although there are some passages in "Julia Alpinula" of greater merit than any in it, yet the faults are so much fewer in number, and the spirit on the whole so superior, that we should have been impressed with a much higher idea of the poet's genius.

We think both poems greatly too long for the simplicity of their subjects; and the latter of the two has its share of affected, new-coined words, and ever changing measure,-although it cannot change to worse than the poet's favourite octosyllabic,—and of another fault, the use of abstract and unpoetic terms, so as to form whole lines and couplets of prose. But in spite of all these defects, we are satisfied that no ordinary verse writer could have written either of these poems; and if Mr. Wiffen be, as we conjecture, a young,-we had almost said a very young man, whose tact may sharpen, and taste improve; if he shall learn to distinguish the sublime from the bathotic, and prose from poetry; acquire the wholesome habit of making sure that any given sentence he pens, has a meaning, as well as a verb, before he casts it upon the wide world; rigidly deny himself the aid of mere rhyme to suggest reason; and lastly, diligently practise the useful art of counting his own fingers,-convinced as we are that he has much of the right feeling, the fire and the genius of a poet, we think he cannot fail to signalize himself even in this age of fertility. With one specimen from " The Captive," we shall clude. It is the spirited description-although in an ill-chosen measure-of the Tyrant Manuel giving the order to immure Eu

5

con

dora. The passage will likewise shew some of the faults we speak of.

"All words, all eloquence were faint,
The monarch's paroxysm to paint,
As veering now from rage to pride,
His mantle-folds he threw aside;
And, fixed on his dark forehead, sate
A mingled scowl of pain and hate.
He stamped his foot, and, at his call,
His armed vassals filled the hall,
And for a minute's space, no sound
Was heard their deepening files a-
round,

But awe and wonder o'er them spread
The unstirring silence of the dead.
Quivered the monarch's lips, and
clung

To the palate's roof his tongue,
Till within his lowering eye

Brighter fires of anger woke
A spell of stronger mastery-
Pointing to the turrets nigh,
Terribly he spoke:

Away, away, this Lady bear

Up yon dark tower's winding stair

;

If a hand but wave below, Lip salute, or head but bow, Headman's axe shall be his doom, 'Hers, a dungeon's deeper gloom. Haughty woman, have thy will, Share his penance, share his ill; Weep by day, by night repine, 'Suns shall rise, and planets shine To thy drooping eye in vain. "Never shalt thou break the chain 'Which around thine arm I wind, Till Prince Andron come to bind His with that which humbleth thee, Sealer of his destiny!

'Sleepless eyes beneath her wait,-To whisper treason in her ear.'” Adamantine be the grate ;

1

ART. VII.-The Percy Anecdotes. Original and Select. By Sholto and Reuben Percy, Brothers of the Benedictine Monastery, Mont Benger. London. Boys. 1820. Part I. Anecdotes of Humanity. Pp. 180. 16mo.

GENERALLY speaking, we do not think anecdotes form the most agreeable species of reading; nor are we disposed to estimate very highly their effects in improving or confirming character. To us, it seems that the very suddenness of the transition from one emotion to another which they occasion, and that too before any meditative or reflex action of mind has been practised, is unfriendly to imaginative interest, at least, if it be not so to advancement in morality. The absence of relation in the events or incidents described, and of consecutiveness in the thoughts suggested, is probably destructive of powerful agency in either way; and we believe we may with confidence appeal to any one who has ever read fifty or more anecdotes at once, for support of