and has afforded us this first opportunity of saying one word in literary respect to distinguished merit of a very rare kind, to preserve the memory of the departed scholar.

"Hoc habeat secum, servetque sepulchro."

If the author of the Croisade' should think that we have not paid sufficient regard to him, while we have been so attentive to his motto, we are obliged to crave his indulgence farther; and to declare that we mean no disrespect, when we avow our inability to discover any real poetic merit in the present volume. Really, we are tired with finding fault; and we feel like involuntary executioners in a just and patriotic cause, -the cause of common sense, good taste, and classical knowlege.

"Quorsum hæc tam putida tendunt?"

said Horace long ago, and

Quorsum hæc Wat-Scotica tendunt?

we are perpetually obliged to exclaim now. What is the earthly, heavenly, or limbo-of-vanity use, in for ever publishing unread poems?

Mr. Kerr is evidently of a gay and galant spirit, dashed with a tinge of occasional melancholy. These are very poetical elements, but they are not enough. Admirable as they are, still they are not enough, we are reluctantly obliged to repeat. Something like scholarship; something like knowlege;a quantity of reading, approaching to the possession of local and particular information; a quality, bearing the semblance of wit; all this was once deemed necessary for the composition of a poem; to say nothing of genius, and other trifling requisites of that nature. Mais nous avons changé tout

cela.

Well, then, let it be so; and let us consider the goodly appearance of a book in a brown cover, and blooming blue or pink back, which contains, like all its contemporaries, the following gems of good nature, set in verse. Will our readers

have the goodness to forget Marmion, and Mr. Braham, for the present occasion?

"He lives! he lives!... How fleet his roan!

My black scarf o'er his shield is thrown,

His plume of dazzling white

Plays in the breeze!... Oh Christ!... He's gone!
Save him!...oh save! he falls!... he's down!

He's up;... oh spirit bright!

His dagger!... Colville spare!... oh spare!"
'Tis plung'd!...for ever sinks De Vere!

Who

Who comes like the rock of the earthquake's shock,
When the storm sweeps o'er the lynn

At the midnight hour, when heaven's own rest
Smiles sweetly on the wearied breast,
And all is peace within;

And blushes on the virgin's cheek,
Her bosom's trembling wishes speak?
He sweeps the vale, and o'er the lea
He bounds;... he's up the hill,
He rushes where the English flee;

"De Vaux! De Vaux ! and victory!"

And as he presses still

Upon the shrinking ranks, around they turn,

Sweep wide their kindling flames, and fierce, and rapid burn.

'Once more the English banners fly,

"De Vaux! De Vaux! and victory!"
Salutes the greedy ear:

And now the scattered ranks are clos'd,
To Murray's arm De Vaux's oppos'd,
Shrinking the Scots appear;

When Allan Græme swept bold along,
Amidst the Scottish spearmen's throng.
As dives the cormorant below,
So pours along the feathery flow,
The Scottish ranks are broke ;
Burst in the English horse amain,
The purpled heath is heap'd with slain,
Stands Allan as a rock;

The ocean billows round him press,
His mountain-rock still motionless.

Sweeps on De Vaux in proud array,
Where Colville breathing from the fray,
Leans o'er the dead De Vere;

Pant man and horse ;... the welkin rings
De Vaux's dread name;... he forward springs

And shakes the glittering spear;

On Colville's breast the weapon rung,

And thro' De Vaux's broad buckler Colville's sprung.'

"Hectoris ac clypeum sic lancea fixit Achillis."

ART. V. Poems, and Translations from Schiller. 8vo. pp. 346. Boards. Rodwell and Martin. 1821.

INE

N a large portion of its contents, this is very far from being a common-place volume; as, indeed, the great German name in the title-page would assure the reader. The original poems of this anonymous writer, however, do not in any way vie with his translations, even if from them alone we form a judgment of

the

the latter but we speak rather of the general attractiveness, than of the particular execution, of these two divisions of the volume. The whole work is very fairly worth the attention of the modern readers of poetry; although we frequently encounter specimens of that carelessness of style, that prosaic species of the poetic genius, which is all that we seem likely at present to enjoy in this once delightful department of literature.

The opening subject in the book, 'The first Anniversary of Waterloo,' is rather disheartening to the sated critic, however animating it may be to the patriot and the warrior. Will not the most devoted admirers of Walter Scott regret, on reading the following lines, that he ever taught this author, and almost all his contemporaries, to leave out that once important part of speech, the definite article, besides some other omissions which we cannot stay to specify?

Perchance Reflection dwelt on theme,

That muser's thoughts will oft control,
(But scorn'd, alike with dotard's dream,
As pride or passion sway the soul ;)
The precept gilding hallow'd scroll,
In strait revered, in power despised;
But ne'er with such attempt, such fall,
Rebell'd against, or signalised.

Surely this is all very hard to construe. Our modern poetical language often seems to sound in our ears like hints for future phraseology, rather than present expressions of thought: but we conclude that we must be wrong, as the remark is neither made nor sanctioned by others.

--

We perceive a little trace of the other imitation, the imitation of Lord Byron, in the subsequent verses :

'O! for a charm to rouse from sleep,
As yestermorn, by trumpet breath,
The associates of yon mangled heap,
That so o'ercharge the subject heath!

Scorn they the call that summoneth?
They do not mock; they ne'er shall rise;
And those that closest clasp in death,
Living, were darkest enemies.
S

REV. JULY, 1822.

• Friendship!

Friendship! thou balm for bleeding heart,
Go gaze upon that anguish'd face!
Cannot thy voice some note impart

Of power to loose from foe's embrace?
Injurious War! thou dost deface
The fairest spectacle on earth;
While enmity usurps the place
Sacred through life to plighted worth!
• Of many a boasted field the pride,
Ambition's early-faded flower;
The tyrant's prop; the regicide;
The foe to all, save rightful power,
Who may distinguish in this hour?
No more in bright attire they vie;

No more, as with contention, lower;
And lie they not as friends should lie?
Yet are not all that strew the field

Deaf to the note that peals to arm;
But, oh, how changed! what ardours quell'd
Since last they hailed the shrill alarm.
The boast of strength, the charm of form,
Defaced with scars, defiled with gore,

Subdued, as life-blood oozes warm,
The spirit, that so wont to soar !'

:

The verses on the interment of the bones of the Roman legions, slaughtered by the Germans, are in some parts good: but really the quotation from Tacitus, which forms their appropriate motto, exhibits such an unrivalled power of dethat we know seription, we may say of moral painting, but little poetry that could in any way be advantageously compared with it.

"Igitur Romanus qui aderat exercitus, sextum post cladis annum, trium legionum ossa, nullo noscente alienas reliquias an suorum humo tegeret, omnes ut conjunctos, ut consanguineos, aucta in hostem irá, mæsti simul et infensi condebant.”. TACITUS Annal. lib.i.'

The ensuing sonnet affords much matter for reflection; and thoughts will arise in some minds of a very different nature, perhaps, from those which the author intended to excite:

To Buonaparte.

Thou art not fall'n, as fall the grand in soul,

Captive of many nations!

- yet thy fate

Hath stamp'd thee so supremely desolate;

That some who wrought thy wreck almost condole ;
Power is not thine, one vassal to control,
Yet such a semblance lingers round thy state,
That kings have heard thy legions at their gate,
As through their courts thy rumour'd rescue stole.

-

All-fetter'd as thou art, and abject now,
The destinies of realms are still on thee;
The bond of union 'mid their rulers, Thou!
More puissant, in thy dread tranquillity,
Than when thy madness made the nations bow;

Bondsmen were then thy debtors;

now the Free.'

We do not greatly approve (for we wish to speak modestly on subjects that are favorites with the public) of such materials for poetry as the subjoined:

To a Sea-Weed picked up after a Storm.

"Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in."

• Exotic!-from the soil no tiller ploughs,
Save the rude surge; fresh stripling from a grove,
Above whose tops the wild sea-monsters rove;
Have not the genii harbour'd in thy boughs,
Thou filmy piece of wonder ! - have not those
Who still the tempest, for thy rescue strove,
And stranded thee thus fair, the might to prove
Of spirits, that the caves of Ocean house?

How else, from capture of the giant-spray,
Hurt-free escapest thou, slight ocean-flower?
As if Arachne wove, thus faultless lay
The full-develop'd forms of fairy-bower;

Who that beholds thee thus, nor with dismay
Recals thee struggling through the storm's dark hour!

To Another.

Thou hermit beauty! - not the violet

With fence like thine encumbers its sweet head,

Nor lily shrinks within its emerald bed,

Remote as thou, beneath the billows' fret;

Thou dost array the paths inviolate,

The regions unexplored of human tread,

Or twin'st thy wreaths in secret round the dead,

A mourning flower o'er seaman's hapless fate.

None eye thee, save through tempest of the surge,

That flings thee as in boast upon the strand;

And then, like something charm'd, thou dost emerge,
Some sample of the growth of fairy-land;
And then to loftier musings thou dost urge,
Creation of the tempest-stirring hand!'

Stella was supposed to highly compliment Swift, as well as bitterly to attack her rival, when she said that the Dean could write beautiful verses on a broomstick; and Mr. Wordsworth, in his pocket poetical edition of inanimate nature, seems to discover much attraction in such subjects, and of course much merit in the management of them.