nected with the defence of what I have shown to be such a monstrous and unparalleled anomaly as the Irish Church; and the success of the Comet Club only proved how well its original members knew the feelings of their countrymen, in fearlessly acting upon the noble aspiration of Doctor Doyle, that "OUR HATRED OF TITHES MAY BE AS LASTING AS OUR LOVE OF JUSTICE !" POSTSCRIPT TO "DAVID'S LAMENT." David's Lament and Wolfe's Lines on Sir John Moore-Critical defect of the latter as compared with the former poem, and the other chief remains of Hebrew song on important national events-Obscurity of Wolfe's lines particularly demonstrated by their translation into French by Father Prout-Fittest place for those lines in a biography of Sir John Moore, or some future standard History of England, on the model of the modern French historians, Michaud, Barante, and Thierry--Historical use of national songs-- Geddess critical version of, and comments upon, David's elegy-Concluding remarks on the monotonous spirituality of Hebrew poetry. THE beautiful lament of David, in the melancholy nature of the public occurrence which suggested it, in its excellence as a composition, and in the circumstance, that if the Hebrew bard left no other production behind him, it alone would suffice to immortalize him as a poet, may be compared to our countryman Wolfe's lines on the burial of Sir John Moore. Those lines, however, although as deservedly as universally admired, are far inferior to David's exquisite elegy. Contrasted with it, they display rather description than sentiment, rather images than feelings, rather selection than creation, rather painting than poetry. There is also, in Wolfe's lines, an inexcusable "sin of omission" which is not in David's elegy, though, in a production like the latter, composed in an age and amongst a people ignorant of the principles of literary criticism, such a fault would be so much more pardonable than in a modern English poem. The fault is that noticed by Johnson, in his critical observations on Pope's epitaphsparticularly of Sir Wm. Trumbal and Mrs. Corbet— viz. the non-insertion in a poem of the name of the person upon whom it was intended to be written. "To what purpose," says the Doctor, "is any thing told of him whose name is concealed?......... The virtues and qualities so recounted...are scattered at the mercy of fortune to be appropriated by guess." Then, after remarking upon an epitaph with such an omission, that "the name, it is true, may be read upon the stone,"-meauing in a prose heading to the verse the Doctor adds :- "But what obliligations has it (the name) to the poet, whose verses may wander over the earth, and leave their subject behind them, and who is forced, like an unskilful painter, to make his purpose known by adventitious help ?" A remarkable instance of the justice of this criticism occurs in Claudian's description of Stilicho's defeat of the Goths, under Alaric, in the great battle fought at Pollentia, March 29th, A.D. 403. "In this engagement," says Gibbon, "which was long maintained with equal courage and success, the chief of the Alani, whose diminutive and savage form |