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What follows, though extremely powerful, and more laboured in the writing, has less charm for us. He tells his celestial auditor the brief story of his misfortune; and when he mentions the death of the only being he had ever loved, the beauteous Spirit breaks in with her superhuman pride.

"And for this

A being of the race thou dost despise,
The order which thine own would rise above,
Mingling with us and ours, thou dost forego
The gifts of our great knowledge, and shrink'st back
To recreant mortality- -Away!
[hour
Man. Daughter of Air! I tell thee, since that
But words are breath!-Look on me in my sleep,
Or watch my watchings-Come and sit by me!
My solitude is solitude no more,

But peopled with the Furies!-I have gnash'd
My teeth in darkness till returning morn,
Then cursed myself till sunset ;-I have pray'd
For madness as a blessing-'tis denied me.
I have affronted Death-but in the war
Of elements the waters shrunk from me,
And fatal things pass'd harmless."-pp. 36, 37.
The third scene is the boldest in the exhi-
bition of supernatural persons. The three
Destinies and Nemesis meet, at midnight, on
the top of the Alps, on their way to the hall
of Arimanes, and sing strange ditties to the
moon, of their mischiefs wrought among men.
Nemesis being rather late, thus apologizes for
keeping them waiting.

"I was detain'd repairing shattered thrones,
Marrying fools, restoring dynasties,
Avenging men upon their enemies,
And making them repent their own revenge;
Goading the wise to madness; from the dull
Shaping out oracles to rule the world
Afresh; for they were waxing out of date,
And mortals dared to ponder for themselves,
To weigh kings in the balance, and to speak
Of freedom, the forbidden fruit.-Away!
We have outstaid the hour-mount we our clouds!"
p. 44.

This we think is out of place at least, if we must not say out of character; and though the author may tell us that human calamities are naturally subjects of derision to the Ministers of Vengeance, yet we cannot be persuaded that satirical and political allusions are at all compatible with the feelings and impressions which it was here his business to maintain. When the Fatal Sisters are again assembled before the throne of Arimanes, Manfred suddenly appears among them, and refuses the prostrations which they require. The first Destiny thus loftily announces him.

"Prince of the Powers invisible! This man
Is of no common order, as his port
And presence here denote; his sufferings
Have been of an immortal nature, like
Our own; his knowledge and his powers and will,
As far as is compatible with clay,
Which clogs the etherial essence, have been such
As clay hath seldom borne; his aspirations
Have been beyond the dwellers of the earth,
And they have only taught him what we know—
That knowledge is not happiness; and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance.
This is not all;-the passions, attributes [being,
Of earth and heaven, from which no power, nor
Nor breath, from the worm upwards, is exempt,
Have pierced his heart; and in their consequence

Made him a thing, which I, who pity not,
Yet pardon those who pity. He is mine,
And thine, it may be-be it so, or not,
A soul like his-or power upon his soul."
No other Spirit in this region hath

pp. 47, 48. At his desire, the ghost of his beloved Astarte is then called up, and appears—but refuses to speak at the command of the Powers who have raised her, till Manfred breaks out into this passionate and agonising address. "Hear me, hear me

Astarte! my beloved! speak to me!

I have so much endured-so much endure-
Look on me the grave hath not changed thee more
Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me
Too much, as I loved thee: we were not made
To torture thus each other, though it were
The deadliest sin to love as we have loved.
Say that thou loath'st me not-that I do bear
This punishment for both-that thou wilt be
One of the blessed-and that I shall die!
For hitherto all hateful things conspire
To bind me in existence-in a life
Which makes me shrink from immortality-
A future like the past! I cannot rest.
I know not what I ask, nor what I seek:
I feel but what thou art-and what I am;
And I would hear yet once, before I perish,
For I have call'd on thee in the still night,
The voice which was my music.-Speak to me!
Startled the slumbering birds from the hush'd

boughs,

And woke the mountain wolves, and made the
Acquainted with thy vainly echoed name, [caves
Which answered me-many things answered me-
Spirits and men-but thou wert silent still!
Yet speak to me! I have out watch'd the stars,
And gazed o'er heaven in vain in search of thee.
Speak to me! I have wandered o'er the earth
And never found thy likeness.-Speak to me!
Look on the fiends around-they feel for me:
I fear them not, and feel for thee alone.-
Speak to me! though it be in wrath;-but say-
I reck not what-but let me hear thee once-
This once!-once more!

Phantom of Astarte. Manfred!
Man.

Say on, say onI live but in the sound-it is thy voice! [ills. Phan. Manfred! To-morrow ends thine earthly Farewell!

Man. Yet one word more-am I forgiven? Phan. Farewell!

Man.

Say, shall we meet again?

Phan. Farewell!
Man. One word for mercy! Say, thou lovest me!
Phan. Manfred!

[The Spirit of ASTARTE disappears. Nem. She's gone, and will not be recalled." pp. 50-52.

The last act, though in many passages very beautifully written, seems to us less powerful. It passes altogether in Manfred's castle, and is chiefly occupied in two long conversations between him and a holy abbot, who comes to exhort and absolve him, and whose counsel he repels with the most reverent gentleness, and but few bursts of dignity and pride. The following passages are full of poetry and feeling.

"Ay-father! I have had those earthly visions,
And noble aspirations in my youth;
To make my own the mind of other men,
The enlightener of nations; and to rise
I knew not whither-it might be to fall;
But fall, even as the mountain-cataract,
Which having leapt from its more dazzling height,
Even in the foaming strength of its abyss,

(Which casts up misty columns that become
Clouds raining from the re-ascended skies),
Lies low but mighty still.-But this is past!
My thoughts mistook themselves.

Abbott. And why not live and act with other men?
Man. Because my nature was averse from life;
And yet not cruel; for I would not make,
But find a desolation :-like the wind,
The red-hot breath of the most lone Simoom,
Which dwells but in the desert, and sweeps o'er
The barren sands which bear no shrubs to blast,
And revels o'er their wild and arid waves,
And seeketh not, so that it is not sought.
But being met is deadly! Such hath been
'The course of my existence; but there came
Things in my path which are no more."-

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pp. 59, 60. There is also a fine address to the setting sun-aud a singular miscellaneous soliloquy, in which one of the author's Roman recollections is brought in, we must say somewhat unnaturally.

"The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains.-Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face

Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learn'd the language of another world!
I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering-upon such a night
I stood within the Colosseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watchdog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near, from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appear'd to skirt the horizon; yet they stood
Within a bowshot.-

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon! upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which soften'd down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up,

As 'twere, anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old!"—
pp. 68, 69.

In his dying hour he is beset with Demons, who pretend to claim him as their forfeit;but he indignantly and victoriously disputes their claim, and asserts his freedom from

their thraldom.

Must crimes be punish'd but by other crimes,
And greater criminals ?-Back to thy hell!
Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know:
What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain from thine:
The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or ill-derives
No colour from the fleeting things without;
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not

tempt me:

I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey-
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter.-Back, ye baffled fiends!
The hand of death is on me-but not yours!

[The Demons disappear."—pp. 74, 75. There are great faults, it must be admitted,

in this poem ;-but it is undoubtedly a work of genius and originality. Its worst fault, perhaps, is, that it fatigues and overawes us by the uniformity of its terror and solemnity. Another is the painful and offensive nature of the circumstance on which its distress is ultimately founded. It all springs from the disappointment or fatal issue of an incestuous passion; and incest, according to our modern ideas for it was otherwise in antiquity-is not a thing to be at all brought before the imagination. The lyrical songs of the Spirits are too long; and not all excellent. There is something of pedantry in them now and then; and even Manfred deals in classical allusions a little too much. If we were to consider it as a proper drama, or even as a finished poem, we should be obliged to add, that it is far too indistinct and unsatisfactory. But this we take to be according to the design and conception of the author. He contemplated but a dim and magnificent sketch of a subject which did not admit of a more accurate drawing, or more brilliant colouring. Its obscurity is a part of its grandeur;—and the darkness that rests upon it, and the smoky distance in which it is lost, are all devices to increase its majesty, to stimulate our curiosity, and to impress us with deeper awe.

It is suggested, in an ingenious paper, in a late Number of the Edinburgh Magazine, that the general conception of this piece, and much of what is excellent in the manner of its execution, have been borrowed from "the Tragical History of Dr. Faustus" of Marlowe; and a variety of passages are quoted, which the author considers as similar, and, in many respects, superior to others in the poem before us. We cannot agree in the general terms of this conclusion;-but there is, no doubt, a certain resemblance, both in some of the topics that are suggested, and in the cast of the diction in which they are expressed. Thus, to induce Faustus to persist in his unlawful studies, he is told that the Spirits of the Elements will serve him

"Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,
Shadowing more beauty in their ayrie browes
Than have the white breasts of the Queene of
Love."

And again, when the amorous sorcerer com-
mands Helen of Troy to be revived, as his
paramour, he addresses her, on her first ap-
pearance, in these rapturous lines-

"Was this the face that launcht a thousand ships,
And burn'd the toplesse towers of Ilium ?
Sweet Helen! make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips sucke forth my soule!-see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soule againe !
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in that lip,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
O! thou art fairer than the evening ayre,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand starres;
More lovely than the monarch of the skyes
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms!"

The catastrophe, too, is bewailed in verses of
great elegance and classical beauty.

"Cut is the branch that might have growne full And burned is Apollo's laurel bough [straight, That sometime grew within this learned man.

Faustus is gone ?-regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful torture may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things."

But these, and many other smooth and fanciful verses in this curious old drama, prove nothing, we think, against the originality of Manfred; for there is nothing to be found there of the pride, the abstraction, and the heart-rooted misery in which that originality consists. Faustus is a vulgar sorcerer, tempted to sell his soul to the Devil for the ordinary price of sensual pleasure, and earthly power and glory and who shrinks and shudders in agony when the forfeit comes to be exacted. The style, too, of Marlowe, though elegant and scholarlike, is weak and childish compared with the depth and force of much of what we have quoted from Lord Byron; and the disgusting buffoonery and low farce of which his piece is principally made up,

place it much more in contrast, than in any terms of comparison, with that of his noble successor. In the tone and pitch of the composition, as well as in the character of the diction in the more solemn parts, the piece before us reminds us much more of the Prometheus of Eschylus, than of any more modern performance. The tremendous solitude of the principal person-the supernatural beings with whom alone he holds communion

the guilt-the firmness-the misery-are all points of resemblance, to which the grandeur of the poetic imagery only gives a more striking effect. The chief differences are, that the subject of the Greek poet was sanctified and exalted by the established belief of his country; and that his terrors are nowhere tempered with the sweetness which breathes from so many passages of his English rival.

(January, 1809.)

Reliques of ROBERT BURNS, consisting chiefly of Original Letters, Poems, and Critical Observations on Scottish Songs. Collected and published by R. H. CROMEK. 8vo. pp. 450. London: 1808.

BURNS is certainly by far the greatest of our poetical prodigies-from Stephen Duck down to Thomas Dermody. They are forgotten already; or only remembered for derision. But the name of Burns, if we are not mistaken, has not yet "gathered all its fame;" and will endure long after those circumstances are forgotten which contributed to its first notoriety. So much indeed are we impressed with a sense of his merits, that we cannot help thinking it a derogation from them to consider him as a prodigy at all; and are convinced that he will never be rightly estimated as a poet, till that vulgar wonder be entirely repressed which was raised on his having been a ploughman. It is true, no doubt, that he was born in an humble station; and that much of his early life was devoted to severe labour, and to the society of his fellow-labour

ers.

childhood; and, co-operating with the solitude of his rural occupations, were sufficient to rouse his ardent and ambitious mind to the love and the practice of poetry. He had about as much scholarship, in short, we imagine, as Shakespeare; and far better models to form his ear to harmony, and train his fancy to graceful invention.

We ventured, on a former occasion, to say something of the effects of regular education, and of the general diffusion of literature, in repressing the vigour and originality of all kinds of mental exertion. That speculation was perhaps carried somewhat too far; but if the paradox have proof any where, it is in its application to poetry. Among well educated people, the standard writers of this description are at once so venerated and so familiar, that it is thought equally impossible But he was not himself either unedu- to rival them, as to write verses without atcated or illiterate; and was placed in a situa- tempting it. If there be one degree of fame tion more favourable, perhaps, to the develop- which excites emulation, there is another ment of great poetical talents, than any other which leads to despair: Nor can we conceive which could have been assigned him. He any one less likely to be added to the short was taught, at a very early age, to read and list of original poets, than a young man of fine write; and soon after acquired a competent fancy and delicate taste, who has acquired a knowledge of French, together with the ele-high relish for poetry, by perusing the most ments of Latin and Geometry. His taste for reading was encouraged by his parents and many of his associates; and, before he had ever composed a single stanza, he was not only familiar with many prose writers, but far more intimately acquainted with Pope, Shakespeare, and Thomson, than nine tenths of the youth that now leave our schools for the university. Those authors, indeed, with some old collections of songs, and the lives of Hannibal and of Sir William Wallace, were his habitual study from the first days of his

celebrated writers, and conversing with the most intelligent judges. The head of such a person is filled, of course, with all the splendid passages of ancient and modern authors, and with the fine and fastidious remarks which have been made even on those passages. When he turns his eyes, therefore, on his own conceptions or designs, they can scarcely fail to appear rude and contemptible. He is perpetually haunted and depressed by the ideal presence of those great masters, and their exacting critics. He is aware to what

comparisons his productions will be subjected among his own friends and associates; and recollects the derision with which so many rash adventurers have been chased back to their obscurity. Thus, the merit of his great predecessors chills, instead of encouraging his ardour; and the illustrious names which have already reached to the summit of excellence, act like the tall and spreading trees of the forest, which overshadow and strangle the saplings which may have struck root in the soil below-and afford efficient shelter to nothing but creepers and parasites.

There is, no doubt, in some few individuals, "that strong divinity of soul"-that decided and irresistible vocation to glory, which, in spite of all these obstructions, calls out, perhaps once or twice in a century, a bold and original poet from the herd of scholars and academical literati. But the natural tendency of their studies, and by far their most common effect, is to repress originality, and discourage enterprise; and either to change those whom nature meant for poets, into mere readers of poetry, or to bring them out in the form of witty parodists, or ingenious imitators. Independent of the reasons which have been already suggested, it will perhaps be found, too, that necessity is the mother of invention, in this as well as in the more vulgar arts; or, at least, that inventive genius will frequently slumber in inaction, where the preceding ingenuity has in part supplied the wants of the owner. A solitary and uninstructed man, with lively feelings and an inflammable imagination, will often be irresistibly led to exercise those gifts, and to occupy and relieve his mind in poetical composition: But if his education, his reading, and his society supply him with an abundant store of images and emotions, he will probably think but little of those internal resources, and feed his mind contentedly with what has been provided by the industry of others.

stage of their history, and in a period comparatively rude and unlettered. Homer weit forth, like the morning star, before the dawn of literature in Greece, and almost all the great and sublime poets of modern Euroje are already between two and three hundred years old. Since that time, although bocks and readers, and opportunities of reading, are multiplied a thousand fold, we have improved chiefly in point and terseness of expression, in the art of raillery, and in clearness and simplicity of thought. Force, richness, and variety of invention, are now at least as rare as ever. But the literature and refinement of the age does not exist at all for a rustic and illiterate individual; and, consequently, the present time is to him what the rude times of old were to the vigorous writers which adorned them..

But though, for these and for other reasons, we can see no propriety in regarding the poetry of Burns chiefly as the wonderful work of a peasant, and thus admiring it much in the same way as if it had been written with his toes; yet there are peculiarities in his works which remind us of the lowness of his origin, and faults for which the defects of his education afford an obvious cause, if not a legitimate apology. In forming a correct estimate of these works, it is necessary to take into account those peculiarities.

The first is, the undiciplined harshness and acrimony of his invective. The great boast of polished life is the delicacy, and even the generosity of its hostility-that quality which is still the characteristic, as it furnishes the denomination, of a gentleman-that principle which forbids us to attack the defenceless, to strike the fallen, or to mangle the slain-and enjoins us, in forging the shafts of satire, to increase the polish exactly as we add to their keenness or their weight. For this, as well as for other things, we are indebted to chival ry; and of this Burns had none. His ingeniTo say nothing, therefore, of the distractions ous and amiable biographer has spoken reand the dissipation of mind that belong to the peatedly in praise of his talents for satirecommerce of the world, nor of the cares of we think, with a most unhappy partiality. minute accuracy and high finishing which are His epigrams and lampoons appear to us, one imposed on the professed scholar, there seem and all, unworthy of him;-offensive from to be deeper reasons for the separation of their extreme coarseness and violence-and originality and accomplishment; and for the contemptible from their want of wit or brilpartiality which has led poetry to choose liancy. They seem to have been written, not almost all her prime favourites among the re-out of playful malice or virtuous indignation. cluse and uninstructed. A youth of quick parts, in short, and creative fancy-with just so much reading as to guide his ambition, and roughhew his notions of excellence-if his lot be thrown in humble retirement, where he has no reputation to lose, and where he can easily hope to excel all that he sees around him, is much more likely, we think, to give himself up to poetry, and to train himself to habits of invention, than if he had been encumbered by the pretended helps of extended study and literary society.

but out of fierce and ungovernable anger. His whole raillery consists in railing; and his satirical vein displays itself chiefly in calling names and in swearing. We say this mainly with a reference to his personalities. In many of his more general representations of life ard manners, there is no doubt much that may be called satirical, mixed up with admirable humour, and description of inimitable vivacity.

There is a similar want of polish, or at least of respectfulness, in the general tone of his gallantry. He has written with more passion. If these observations should fail to strike perhaps, and more variety of natural feeling. of themselves, they may perhaps derive ad-on the subject of love, than any other poet ditional weight from considering the very remarkable fact, that almost all the great poets of every country have appeared in an early

whatever-but with a fervour that is sometimes indelicate, and seldom accommodated to the timidity and "sweet austere com

posure" of women of refinement. He has expressed admirably the feelings of an enamoured peasant, who, however refined or eloquent he may be, always approaches his mistress on a footing of equality; but has never caught that tone of chivalrous gallantry which uniformly abases itself in the presence of the object of its devotion. Accordingly, instead of suing for a smile, or melting in a tear, his muse deals in nothing but locked embraces and midnight rencontres; and, even in his complimentary effusions to ladies of the highest rank, is for straining them to the bosom of her impetuous votary. It is easy, accordingly, to see from his correspondence, that many of his female patronesses shrunk from the vehement familiarity of his admiration; and there are even some traits in the volumes before us, from which we can gather, that he resented the shyness and estrangement to which those feelings gave rise, with at least as little chivalry as he had shown in producing them.

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and that the excuse of impetuous feeling can hardly ever be justly pleaded for those who neglect the ordinary duties of life, must be apparent, we think, even to the least reflecting of those sons of fancy and song. It requires no habit of deep thinking, nor any thing more, indeed, than the information of an honest heart, to perceive that it is cruel and base to spend, in vain superfluities, that money which belongs of right to the pale industrious tradesman and his famishing infants; or that it is a vile prostitution of language, to talk of that man's generosity or goodness of heart, who sits raving about friendship and philanthropy in a tavern, while his wife's heart is breaking at her cheerless fireside, and his children pining in solitary poverty.

This pitiful cant of careless feeling and eccentric genius, accordingly, has never found much favour in the eyes of English sense and morality. The most signal effect which it ever produced, was on the muddy brains of some German youth, who are said to have But the leading vice in Burns' character, left college in a body to rob on the highway! and the cardinal deformity, indeed, of all his because Schiller had represented the captain productions, was his contempt, or affectation of a gang as so very noble a creature.-But contempt, for prudence, decency, and reg-in this country, we believe, a predilection for ularity; and his admiration of thoughtless- that honourable profession must have preness, oddity, and vehement sensibility;-his ceded this admiration of the character. The belief, in short, in the dispensing power of style we have been speaking of, accordingly, genius and social feeling, in all matters of is now the heroics only of the hulks and the morality and common sense. This is the house of correction; and has no chance, we very slang of the worst German plays, and suppose, of being greatly admired, except in the lowest of our town-made novels; nor can the farewell speech of a young gentleman any thing be more lamentable, than that it preparing for Botany Bay. should have found a patron in such a man as Burns, and communicated to many of his productions a character of immorality, at once contemptible and hateful. It is but too true, that men of the highest genius have frequently been hurried by their passions into a violation of prudence and duty; and there is something generous, at least, in the apology which their admirers may make for them, on the score of their keener feelings and habitual want of reflection. But this apology, which is quite unsatisfactory in the mouth of another, becomes an insult and an absurdity whenever it proceeds from their own. A man may say of his friend, that he is a noble-hearted fellow -too generous to be just, and with too much spirit to be always prudent and regular. But he cannot be allowed to say even this of himself; and still less to represent himself as a hairbrained sentimental soul, constantly carried away by fine fancies and visions of love and philanthropy, and born to confound and despise the cold-blooded sons of prudence and sobriety. This apology, indeed, evidently Akin to this most lamentable trait of vuldestroys itself: For it shows that conduct to garity, and indeed in some measure arising be the result of deliberate system, which it out of it, is that perpetual boast of his own affects at the same time to justify as the fruit independence, which is obtruded upon the of mere thoughtlessness and casual impulse. readers of Burns in almost every page of his Such protestations, therefore, will always be writings. The sentiment itself is noble, and treated, as they deserve, not only with con- it is often finely expressed ;--but a gentleman tempt, but with incredulity; and their mag- would only have expressed it when he was nanimous authors set down as determined insulted or provoked; and would never have profligates, who seek to disguise their selfish-made it a spontaneous theme to those friends ness under a name somewhat less revolting. in whose estimation he felt that his honour That profligacy is almost always selfishness, stood clear. It is mixed up, too, in Burns

It is humiliating to think how deeply Burns has fallen into this debasing error. He is perpetually making a parade of his thoughtlessness, inflammability, and imprudence, and talking with much complacency and exultation of the offence he has occasioned to the sober and correct part of mankind. This odious slang infects almost all his prose, and a very great proportion of his poetry; and is, we are persuaded, the chief, if not the only source of the disgust with which, in spite of his genius, we know that he is regarded by many very competent and liberal judges. His apology, too, we are willing to believe, is to be found in the original lowness of his situation, and the slightness of his acquaintance with the world. With his talents and powers of observation, he could not have seen much of the beings who echoed this raving, without feeling for them that distrust and contempt which would have made him blush to think he had ever stretched over them the protecting shield of his genius.

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