the cross of his sword, awaiting, with heroic resignation, the ap proach of that death which he received in defence of his sove reign?

Having endeavoured as far as our leisure and limits would permit, to establish the superiority, in poetical effect, of the modern school of chivalry, it naturally follows that we go on to inquire into the influence which the relation of such actions as we have alluded to, is likely to have on the taste and manners of the present age; in other words, what will be their moral tendency. If books have any influence in this respect, as some very wise men doubt, the moral tendency of a work of fancy ought to be one test of its excellence. But this subject would lead us into too great a field of discussion. Leaving it therefore to some future occasion, we will now uncage the terrible Wild-Irishman, according to our promise, the fulfilment of which doubtless is anxiouly expected by the reader, who has been accustomed to consider an Irishman as feræ nature whom any man may hunt down without a license.

Those who are in the least enlightened, that is to say, those who are in the habit of reading the English newspapers, will long since have discovered that all Irishmen are wild, except a few who have become tame by a residence in England, and those who submit without murmuring to that mild, gentle, and considerate system of government under which they have the happiness to live. These Wild-Irishmen are principally catholics, the ancient possessors of that land, which, under the auspices of Queen Elizabeth, became the property of certain disinterested English, who came over to civilize them. Ever since this change of property, the ancient Irish have cherished a most unreasonable antipathy to these pious missionaries of civilization; and are in their turn heartily abominated by the English ministry, who, while they are most zealously upholding the catholic religion in Spain, are as zealously treading it under foot in Ireland.

That the unlucky poet whom we have turned out for the chase is a Wild-Irishman is evident, because, in the first place, he praises his country, loves his countrymen, and believes Ossian to have been born in Ireland. Nay, in one of his notes, he goes even farther than Sir Callaghan O'Brallagan himself, maintaining stoutly, that Ireland was anciently called Scotia, and that the

wily Scots, who we all know are not a whit too good for such things, not only cheated their country out of Ossian, but out of its name. Whether Ossian was an Irishman, a Scot, or nobody, as many learned men believe, is left to the decision of those who take an interest in the subject.

The author acknowledges that he wrote the present poem under the influence of irritated feelings, on perceiving that illiberal prejudice which exists in England, not only against the Irish, but most other nations, except the Indians and Algerines. That it should, therefore, exhibit a warmth of commendation which occasionally approaches to extravagance is scarcely to be wondered at. If ever boasting is allowable, it is when the person is called upon to repel unmerited aspersion. But we have already indulged in a great latitude of general remark, and will, therefore, proceed to cite some particular passages, accompanied by such observations as occur to our minds.

The opening of the poem is an animated address to Ireland, which exhibits a warmth of feeling that cannot fail of pleasing those whose want of experience has prevented them from learning the important secret, that all poets are expected to praise the country in which they were born, and in which they have enjoyed the luxuries of starvation.

"Erin, dear by every tie,

That binds us to our infancy;

By weeping memory's fondest claims,
By Nature's highest, holiest names,
By the sweet potent spell that twines
The exile's secret heart around,
By wo and distance faster bound,
When for his native soil he pines
As wafted o'er the clouded deep,
And shuddering at the tempest's roar,
He thinks how sweet its waters sleep
Upon thy lone and lovely shore;
By thy indignant patriot's tear,
Oh! even by misfortune dear!
Erin, from thy living tomb
Arise-the hour of hope is come.

Think on what thou once hast been,
Think on many a glorious scene

Which graced thy hills and valleys green;
Think on Malachi the brave;

Look on Brian's verdant grave;

Brian, the glory and grace of our age,

Brian, the shield of the Emerald Isle,
The lion incens'd was a lamb to his rage,

The dove was an eagle, compar'd to his smile."

As a sober traveller mounted on what he supposes to be a steady-paced nag, finds, ere he reaches the first milestone, that the hostler has imposed upon him a whimsical bedevilled animal, that one moment ambles gently along, the next breaks into a villanous hobbling canter, and anon, without the least preliminary "resolution of the intervening discords," bounces off in a long trot-straight the honest rider begins to feel himself exceedingly uneasy in the saddle, becomes tired of the soul-worrying caprices of his Rosinante, and wishes him fairly in a horse-pond— even so, gentle reader, it fared with us. Gently and smoothly ambling down the passage we have just quoted, where no discord grates upon the ear, and scarce an intruding thought occurs to ripple the smooth surface of the printless mirror, we were suddenly, and without the least notice, almost unhorsed by the change of pace in which the poet's Pegasus indulges himself in the four lines beginning with

"Brian, the glory and grace of our age."

Before, however, we had time to accommodate ourselves to this new gait, this whimsical Wild-Irishman scampered off in a most appalling long trot.

"The sun has grown old since Clontarf's bloody wave
Saw thee sleep the sweet sleep of the patriot brave;
But thy glory still infantine beams from on high,
The light of our soil, and the sun of our sky."

There is something singularly odd in the antithesis contained in these four lines. That the sun should "grow old," while the

fame of Brian grows young, is a singularity that approaches nearer to the figure of rhetoric called Taurus, than any thing in the whole poem.

Immediately after this, the poet "breaks up" into the following limping strain, which resembles marvellously the pace of a man who labours under the misfortune of wearing one leg longer than the other.

"Where now the passing stranger sees

Some orphan tree

Sighing in the desert breeze

So piteously-"

Alas! poor "orphan tree!" Anon, the capricious poney ambles off at the following rate.

Again,

"Clive and Comedy came together,
Waving wild their wand of feather,
Round and round the antic throng;
Led along

By their airy song."

"How the holy sound
Would call around

The vision of former years!

The virgins bright,

In their mantles of light,

Would forget the virgin's fears."

The Pegasus of the present day is assuredly not the horse with which the earlier English poets so bravely attained the height of "crack skulled" Parnassus, or he has been terribly spoiled by un skilful jockeys. When Dryden rode him he was a majestic warhorse, his "neck clothed with thunder," prancing along with a grand and steady pace, and bearing his rider and himself unjaded to the end of the journey. Now, under the direction of the mighty masters of the modern epic school, he appears a little, stumbling, capricious, ungovernable Narragansett poney, shamVOL. H. New Series.

9

bling along as we occasionally see a pug dog, sometimes on three legs, sometimes on four, and relieving himself from the intolerable fatigues of his way, by practising every variety of motion. There are in the present poem, we imagine, at least, thirty different metres, jumbled together with the most unaccountable whimsicality, so that we advise the reader to keep a good look out before him, else he will be continually in danger of being unhorsed by the stumbling varieties of this clumsy Pegasus.

“Our author”—this is a phrase used by us critics to show that the author is exclusively our property-has availed himself of the poetic license established by the Great Master of the modern school of epic, to change his rhyme and his measure just as it suits him. By this unrestrained liberty, the poet is, in a great measure, released from the shackles of rhyme, and can indulge in rigmarole story-telling as much as he pleases.

Having formerly premised that our object was to set forth some of the most prominent features of the present fashionable school of poetry, we will not spend much time in stating the peculiar beauties and faults of the poem before us. It is principally devoted to the praise of Ireland, which is poetically known as the "Emerald Isle," and to the distinguished characters it has produced. In the pursuit of this last object we think he has selected many individuals that do little honour to his country, and injudiciously blended real with fictitious personages, at least, personages whose existence and exploits seem to belong to the region of fable. He has celebrated the late Miss Owenson,* and not only celebrated, but imitated her in that mawkish sentiment, as well as that imposing and obscure style, which dazzles without enlightening; and where the reader is continually tantalized with some shadowy spectre of an idea, which can never be reduced to any specific form or dimensions.

He has dwelt, too, we think, with a most unlucky partiality upou the name of Dermody, whose talents as a poet by no means kept pace with his improvements in vice and immorality. To the eccentricities and irregularities of genius, we are at all times willing to afford a liberal toleration; but ingratitude, vice and debauchery, must not hope to find a sanction from their connexion with supe

*Now Lady Morgan.