passages. A vigour of imagination, indeed, and a simplicity in composition and idea adequately combined for the production of a sublime religious poem, form a faculty of rare attainment, and which has been exerted with felicity in only three or four instances since. the birth of Christianity; for the reiterated attempts of the poets of Italy, in the language of either ancient or modern Rome, are by no means worthy of their subject.

Our celebrated countryman, the immortal MILTON, may therefore be considered as the very first, who with true dignity supported the weight of his stupendous theme,

For Atlantean Spirit proper charge.

Gifted with a mind pre-eminently sublime, and richly stored with all the various branches of learning and science, with an ear attuned to harmony, and a taste chastised by cultivation, the divine bard projected and completed a poem, which has challenged the admiration of each succeeding age, and is, without exaggeration, the noblest monument of human genius.

With powers inferior to Milton, turgid, obscure, and epigrammatic, yet with occasional sallies of imagination, and bursts of sublimity that course along the gloom with the rapidity and brilliancy of lightning, YOUNG has in his Night Thoughts become a favourite not only with the multitude here, but with many of the nations upon the continent, for, with the bulk of mankind, there is little discrimination between the creative energy of Milton, and the tumid declamation of Young, or between the varied pauses of highly-finished blank-verse and a succession of monotonous lines. Young has, however, the merit of originality: for few authors who have written so much have left fainter traces of imitation, or in the happy hour of inspiration more genuine and peculiar excellence.

The felicity of producing a sacred epic that may be thrown into competition with the Paradise Lost has been claimed, and justly claimed, by the literati of Germany. KLOPSTOCK, though possessing not the stern and gigantic sublimity of Milton, still elevates the mind by the vigour and novelty of his fiction,

and is certainly more tender and pathetic than the English Bard. "The edifice of Milton," says the ingenious Herder, " is a stedfast and well-planned building, resting on ancient columns. Klopstock's is an enchanted Dome, echoing with the softest and purest tones of human feeling, hovering between heaven and earth, borne on angels' shoulders. Milton's Muse is Masculine-Klopstock's is a tender woman dissolving in pious ecstacies, warbling elegies and hymns.-When music shall acquire among us the highest powers of her art, whose words will she select to utter but those of Klopstock?"* Impartial posterity will probably confirm this opinion of the critic, but omit, as I have done, the epithet harsh as applicable to Miltonic numbers; and it will assuredly annul the idea of Herder that Klopstock "has won for the language of his country more powers than the Briton ever suspected his to possess ;" for the strength and energy, the varied harmony and beauty of the English language, the words that breathe and burn, are displayed with prodigality in the pages of Milton: nor will it be conceded that the language of Germany, as even now improved and polished, is at all superior to the

* Herder's Letters on Humanization.

nervous yet harmonious diction of Great Britain. It is to be lamented however, that no version of the Messiah at all adequate to the merit of its celerated author has been yet introduced into our island. Blank-verse, cast in the Miltonic mould, would be the only suitable vehicle for the bold and beautiful imagery of this poem, which, when thus clothed, could not fail of exciting the admiration of the public.*

* It is remarkable that the third book of the Messiah opens with an invocation to Light; it therefore immediately courts a comparison with the celebrated address of Milton, in his third book, to the same element: both poets have traversed the infernal world, and are approaching the confines of the terrestrial globe. The parallelism will confirm the opinion of Herder with regard to the superior sublimity of the English bard, who in this passage certainly excels himself, and when lamenting his deprivation of sight, an adjunctive circumstance, which Klopstock fortunately for himself had it not in his power to introduce, is more pathetic, perhaps, than any other poet. The German is tender, elegant, and impressive, the characteristics of his style, according to the critics of his country, throughout the whole of his elaborate work.

For the following translation of the commencement of the third book of the Messiah, I am indebted to my friend Mr. Good. Every reader will recollect the parallel invocation in Milton, "Hail, holy light," &c. &c.

Once more I hail thee, once behold thee more,
Earth! soil maternal! thee, whose womb of yore
Bore me; and soon, beneath whose gelid breast,
These limbs shall sink in soft and sacred rest.
Yet
may I first complete this work begun,
And sing the covenant of th' ETERNAL SON.

From the brief mention of these three divine bards, we pass on to the immediate subject of our paper, THE CALVARY OF MR. CUMBERLAND, a work imbued with the genuinet spirit of Milton, and destined therefore, most

O! then these lips, his heavenly love that told,
These eyes that oft in streams of rapture roll'd,
Shall close in darkness !-o'er my mouldering clay
A few fond friends their duteous rites shall pay,
And with the palm, the laurel's deathless leaf
Deck my light turf, and prove their pious grief.
There shall I sleep, till o'er this mortal dust,
Springs, long announc'd, the morning of the just;
Then, fresh embodied in a purer mold,
Triumphant rise, and brighter scenes behold.

Thou! Muse of Sion! who, with potent spell,
Thro' hell hast led me, and return'd from hell,
Still shudd'ring at the voyage :-thou whose eye
Can oft the thoughts of God himself descry,
And, thro' the frown that veils his awful face,
Read the fair lines of love, and heav'nly grace,-
Shine on this soul! that trembles at the sight
Of her own toils, with pure celestial light;
Raise her low powers, that yet, with loftier wing,
The best of men, the SAVIOUR GOD she sing.

In a letter addressed to the Princess Royal of England in 1797, by the Rev. Herbert Croft, he announces a version, line for line, of Klopstock's Messiah in English hexameters, a specimen of which he has given in this epistle. The completion of this undertaking is the more desirable, as he enjoys the advantage of a personal and intimate acquaintance with the German Homer, and can consult him on the meaning of every obscure passage.