From which they leapt and live by miracle; To see that horrid spectre of my thoughts To mark the living lineaments of hatred, And say, this is the man whose sight should blast me; It is a horrid joy. We give the following unintelligible jargon to our readers: perhaps some of them may understand it-though it seeins to us the most inconceivable nonsense ever written since the publication of the BAVIAD: Imogine. Yea, time hath power, and what a power I'll tell thee, To one dull throb of ceaseless agony, To bush the sigh on the resigned lip And lock it in the heart-freeze the hot tear, Bertram tells Imogine that he will not curse her; as be departs, however, (by way of farewel, we suppose,) he pro⚫nounces upon her the following imprecation; which, if it be not a curse, is at least very like one; our readers may judge. Bertram. Of thy rank wishes the full scope be on thee May pomp and pride shout in thine adder'd path And in the bright blaze of the festal hall, When vassals kneel, and kindred smile around thee, Joy to the proud dame of St. Aldobrand— While his cold corse doth bleach beneath her towers. Here is another execrable passage: Bertram. Behold me, Earth, what is the life he hunts for? Lo, there the crushed serpent coils to sting thee, Bertram thus addresses his band of ruffians: Yes, ye are welcome, Your spirits shall be proud-ho-hear me, villains. Would rend the screaming infant from the breast Yea, draw your keen knives across a father's throat, And carve with them the bloody meal ye earned. Villains, rejoice-your leader's crimes have purg'd you; Ye bave beheld me fallen-begone--begone. There is no lack of horrors of this sort; of which those who have not already "supped full enough," will find abundance in this production; but we have forgot the taste of such fears" and, however terribly sublime this kind of writing may seem to novel-reading ladies and finical gentlemen, to hoary-headed Reviewers, who have been trained in a severer school, it has an appearance irresistibly grotesque and fantastical. The following, we presume, is intended to be expressed in the genuine language of passion: Imogine. Whom doth the dark wind chide so hollowly? The very stones shrink from my steps of guilt; Sense, memory, feeling, life, extinct and swallow'd! The last quotation with which we intend to persecute our readers is the following; in which, we think, the author has fairly outdone all his other outdoings. ye whence I come? The tomb-where dwell the dead-and I dwell with him- I am amaz'd to see ye living men: I deem'd that when I struck the final blow We might make an ample anthology of this kind of flowers, but we consider the selection already large enough We are ashamed, in fact, to quote more. It is sufficient that we say, that the tragedy is a mere tissue of passages of equal, and even of greater absurdity. Besides, we have great choice of such delectable phrases as "bickering glare-momently gleams of sheeted blue-withering eye-blazing senses-battling clouds-glare of hell-hollow pauses-rich and burning tears-flashing deep-infernal light-baseless crag-charnel-stream of murder-dark terror-dark lightning-dark wave-dark wind-dark chase"-and others equally pregnant with meaning. To make up for the want of pathos, too, the author is profuse of oh! and ah! and hush! and list! and lo! horror! horror! away! away! and similar energetic and affecting exclamations. A more serious charge than that of mere absurdity still remains to be made against the author-that of impiety-of which our reader may find examples at pages 17, 35, 40, 56, 66. And at page 76 he speaks of an angel with as little cere mony, and uses the same language, as if he were talking of a sparrow. There was an hovering augel Just lighting on my heart, and thou hast scar'd it. The rhythm is very irregular-Some of the lines consist of seven, some of eight, and some of eleven, twelve, and even of thirteen feet and we have a long series of such halting verses as these: The storm seems hush'd-wilt thou to rest, lady? p. 10. Lead them in They need speedy care. Which is your leader? . 23. In secret suspension of mortality. p. 2 p. 21. There is also a continual affectation of emphasis and sounding metaphor; the most dignified and the meanest things are expressed in the same magnificent manner. All this is provoking; but it is rendered ten times more intolerable by the lofty and vehement tone in which all this absurdity is enunciated. The faults themselves are gross enough; but the author, by the imperative way in which he seems to present them to our admiration as beauties, has contrived to make them much more prominent, and infinitely more disgusting. There is one tolerable scene in this tragedy, and no more; that in which Imogine relates her own story. It is told in very smooth and mellifluous verse, and with some poetical feeling; and altogether it seems to our ears a faint echo of the romantic sweetness of Beaumont and Fletcher. We now take our leave of this subject, and of the Reverend author. It is unnecessary to add more. The extracts which we have made from his tragedy, we think, bear us out in our opinion of its merits. Those who are not converted to that opinion by the display of the miraculous follies of the production before us, we are hopeless of convincing by our arguments. Upon the whole, we think, the words of one WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, (a writer with whom the present author seems little acquainted) exhibit a pretty fair summary of the qua lities and character of the performance now under exami nation. "Taffata phrases-silken terms precise Three-piled hyperboles-spruce affectation- Hath blown us up with maggot ostentation-" But we should hesitate a little before affirming, that these are the requisite qualities for a Tragedy. ART. VIII.-The War-Fiend, with other Poems. By THOMAS BROWN, M.D. Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Murray. 1816, HERE is a volume of poems by the Author of the Paradise of Coquettes, and the Wanderer in Norway. The Rape of the Lock takes away from the first the character of originality; it also wants the vivacity, the gaiety, and the truth of Pope's enchanting production; and, with all its smoothness and polish, it becomes, from its length, and the laboured speeches on trifling and lady-like subjects, monotonous and tedious. The Wanderer in Norway (notwithstanding the author's unfortunate choice of the profligate Mary Wollstonecraft for the heroine of his poem) contains many passages and situations truly pathetic; and is embellished with many striking and original sketches of northern scenery. But the poetry of Dr. Brown, though it has occasionally a character of boldness or tenderness, is much more remarkable for the sweetness with which it flows-and of this quality we intend to give our readers some specimens. The War-Fiend is introduced by an elaborate preface, in which the author, after recounting the difficulties which he had to surmount, tells us, what is not quite new, that a thing which is related as past, does not give us the same sensation of reality with a relation of what is supposed to be at the time passing, as it were, under our eyes. He has therefore had recourse to a method, which, as he conceives, presents a much more lively idea of what is expressed. The poem opens with the midnight-journey of a warrior towards a spot, which in the morning is to be the scene of a battle. In his cagerness to join in the mortal fray, the place of which he could not have reached by mortal means, he had invoked the aid of the War-Fiend, who places him on his steed of fire, and accompanies him on his journey invisible. The poet thinks that he places much more distinctly before the eyes of the reader every thing which is going forward, by relating them through this captivating compagnon de voyages. This being plunges the warrior into the battle-directs his arm-inspires him with the most blood-thirsty desires-laughs at his human feelings-and finally, after leading him to the heights of wickedness and impiety, suffers him to fall by an arrow, and descends with him to the Caverns of Death. All this is told in a rapid and powerful manner, and with much vigour of imagination. The horrors, however, are too much in the taste of the German school.The fiend himself is decidedly of German parentage. Any body who has read Bürger's Ballad, Die Wilde Jager, or his Leonora, will at once recognize the voice and qualities of the War-Fiend. But surely this manner of relating a story, whatever may be gained in force and spirit, (and we are not sure that any thing will be gained,) is very unnatu ral and ridiculous: and the narrative of such a Cicerone continued through a poem of three parts, seems by far more artificial and improbable than any medium of another kind. The recollection of the invisible speaker, besides, recurs in a most unpleasant way to the mind of the reader, when the narrative is not equally sustained throughout; and this inequality is often evident in the present poem, from the unlucky measure in which it is written. We think that the attempt of Mr. Montgomery in his Wanderer of Switzerland, and its melancholy result, should have deterred Dr. Brown from writing a long poem like the War-Fiend, in this mea |