Great Shakspeare* now commands the midnight

hour,

And o'er the soul extends his dreadful power. 220
When in the tempest rais'd by Prosper's hand
He waves o'er Nature his commanding wand;
When on the field of Bosworth, Richard lay,
And horrors shuddered at approaching day,
The ghosts of York hung o'er his trembling bed
And breath'd their vengeance on their murderer's

When Ariel sings and moves amid the air,

When Banquo rises to the vacant chair;.

• So much has been said and written concerning this wonderful man, that no one can add to his praises, and no one without arrogance can attempt to detract from them. In the list of Genius, Shakspeare is perhaps the brightest name. His superiority of invention gives him his superiority of genius. His limited education allowed him little opportunity of being acquainted with the writers of Greece and of Rome. His soul was kindled by no borrowed fire. He was visited by no beams but those of the sun of Nature. In the smaller accomplishments of the poet, he is oftentimes deficient; but the richness of his description, his propriety of sentiment, his accuracy and variation of characters, and above all that inventive power which calls an ideal world into existence, mark the great original,

When Hamlet's ghost, the bell then beating one,*

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Stalks pale and sullen by his warlike son.
Then gloom and terror throw their mantle round,
And every power lies still in awe profound.

Where Auracauna nurs'd her warlike race,
Wild as the tempest, fleeting in the chace,
Ercilla pour'd his bold and wandering strain,
The pride of Genius and the boast of Spain..
When rest succeeded to the toils of war

And in the sky appear'd the evening star,

Stretch'd on a rock and drench'd with falling dews

He heard the dictates of his epict muse.

HORATIO....Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this. BERNARDO....Last night of all,

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When yon same star that's westward from the pole,
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus, and myself,

The bell then beating one.....

MARCELLUS..... Peace, break thee off, look where it

comes again.

HAMLET.

About the end of the sixteenth century, the poem here alluded to was produced in Spain. It is celebrated for peculiar beauties, for the singularity of the subject, and is remarkable from the character of its author. His

A perfect taste dwells only in the mind, With manners polish'd, sentiments refin'd; But Genius rises from the darkest shade, Where never ploughshare cut the barren glade. Amidst his native wilds and misty plains, Sublimest Ossian, pours his wizard strains. The voice of old revisits his dark dream, On his sad soul the deeds of warriors beam;

name was Don Alonzo d'Ercilla Y. Cuniga, he commanded some troops in Chili, where he waged war în a little mountainous country, called Auracauna, inhabited by a race of men more robust and ferocious than all the other American nations. In this war he underwent extreme dangers, and performed the most astonishing actions: This occasioned him to conceive the design of immortalizing himself, by immortalizing his enemies. He was both a conqueror and a poet, and entitled his poem Auracauna, from the name of the country. His pen was as busily employed amidst those wilds as his sword. He wrote his poem on the scenes of his battles: and as night afforded more rest from the toils of war than the day, he often obeyed the dictates of his muse, reclining on the rocks, and aided by the light of the moon. As he could not at all times obwork were written upon leather

tain paper, parts of his

and upon the bark of trees. He has introduced much fire in his battles. His poem is as wild as the nations who are the subject, and discovers great copiousness and strength of imagination.

Alone he sits upon the distant hill,

Beneath him falls a melancholy rill;

His harp lies by him on the rustling grass,

The deer before him thro' the thickets pass;
No hunter winds his slow and sullen horn,

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No whistling cow-herd meets the breath of morn;
O'er the still heath the meteors dart their light
And round him sweep the mournful blasts of Night.
O voice of Cona, bard of other times,

May thy bold spirit visit these dull climes!
May the brave chieftains of thy rugged plains,
Remember Ossian* and revere his strains!

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* Ossian may be called the most mournful of bards. It is impossible to read his poems without being lulled into a thoughtful melancholy which is more beneficial to the heart than the brightest joy. The regions which a poet inhabits will always give a cast to his strains. Ossian amidst his isle of mists caught his gloomy enthusiasm. There was presented to his view a wild, pictu"resque and melancholy country, long tracts of mountainous desert, covered with dark heath. There he wandered through narrow vallies, thinly inhabited and bounded by precipices, which by the light of the moon presented a landscape the most grotesque and ghastly. There he heard on every side the fall of torrents, the mournful dashing of e waves along the friths and lakes, and the hollow