ART. V. Phantoms, a Poem, in Two Parts. With Myrrha, a Fragment, translated from the Provençal. By J. H. St. Aubyn. 8vo. pp. 116. sewed. Whittakers. 1823.

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HE mere title of this work is an echo to its contents, TH very excellent index; for the sound of it is romantic in a high degree. It comes breathing of the "olden times," fresh from the fields of romance; it is sent to us from the lakes of Geneva; and is the production of St. Aubyn, — quite a chivalric name. It is strange that, with all these pleasing externals, it should fail to please us: yet such is the truth. Though we are no lovers of common poetry, we are great lovers of common sense; we think that this is a quality not altogether to be discarded in the most creative poetry in the world; and we look for a certain meaning and coherence even in waking dreams, not excepting those of Lord Byron, especially when they are put forth in print. 'Phantoms,' too, should retain some degree of resemblance to the human beings with whom they have to deal: but we confess that Mr. St. Aubyn's phantoms are of too wild and indefinite a character for us to comprehend; and he must excuse us, if he was himself somewhat loth to hear his friend's dream,' from being very complaisant to it when turned into a line of poetical phantoms, as long as those which shook the fiery soul of Macbeth. He says that he intended it to have been included in about a hundred or a hundred and fifty lines; the matter increased.' (Preface.) This is evident, without the testimony of one of the Phantoms:-"we need no ghost to tell us that;" for the poem exceeds six hundred and eighty lines, about the size of one of Homer's books. The author may well complain that they grew upon him;- that the phantoms became larger and larger; - and Apollo only knows how his poor son dealt with them, so as to get rid of them in the end. Nothing less than one of Prince Hohenlohe's miracles, we imagine, could have brought him through; for these poetical phantoms of the brain, when once raised, are by no means easily set at rest. Yet we would willingly try our good offices, or bespeak those of the Prince, in Mr. St. Aubyn's behalf; and we advise him to cross himself devoutly, whenever they appear again with the intention of compelling him

to write.

Still, we do not mean to assert that Mr. St. Aubyn has done worse than hundreds of his brethren, who travel, and write poetry on their travels, or after their travels, because they have nothing better to do. In style and manner he is evidently a pupil of the Byronian school; and we might imagine that he had met with his Lordship among the Hartz mountains,

mountains, where they had together studied the sublimities of the spectral scenery. (See Dr. Ferriar's Theory of Apparitions.) We recollect his Lordship's " Dream," which is quite wild enough: but Mr. St. A. has completely outdreamed his

master.

It is, however, for the matter and the meaning, or rather for the want of meaning, that we blame the poet; not for the absence of occasional bursts of real poetry and sentiment; which, indeed, as we leave the Phantoms behind us, become more frequent and intelligible. Still they can only be considered deviations from the general mediocrity of the whole; spots of green on the Oasis to cheer the travelling critic's eye. Such, we think, are some of the following:

< We much have mixed mankind among ;
Well seen the heartless childish throng.
We saw it, as the wise should see,

To learn if aught might there be learned, -
We fled it as the wise will flee,

When they find naught may there be earned;
I left in scorn, but not so thou,
No glow of anger tinged thy brow,
Each nature charactered its sign,
Disdain and hate well suited mine.

Such graceless passions were not given to thine!

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*

Absence will quench love, weak before,
As storms, the taper's glimmering light;
But passion strong it strengtheneth more,
As gales inflame the beacon's might;
Kindness will kindle raptures deep,
And make a lovely form beloved;
Yet more it grafteth love to weep,

The loss of one for aye removed;

Each sigh we breath, each tear we shed
The very pains we take to hide them,
Lest laughing Folly should deride them, -
Is food with which the flame is fed,
And makes the heart more closely wed
The object mourned, its hope for ever fled!'

Pleasing as some of these lines are, their faults in poetical sentiment and language must be too apparent to require exposition; and the same, in a less degree, may be said of the subsequent touching and heartfelt description of a little familygroupe:

'I came one unexpected day,

No sound did my approach betray;
Upon thy lap the child was toying,
To mark his pleasure thou wert joying;

I saw him stretch his arms, and seek
To twine his fingers round thy neck,
I saw thee from th' embrace retire,
And smile to see his playful ire:
Then, partly panting to embrace,
To cause him sorrow, loth in part,
Gaze for an instant in his face,

Then closely strain him to thy heart.
'I stood, I gazed, I drew more near,
He caught a stranger's form with fear;
I saw his timid arms entwine

The startled bosom of his mother,
Who strove to hide the rising sign

Of chided thoughts she could not smother!
In that eventful hour of meeting

Thee, of my approach unweeting,

How started through the dizzy brain,

Those feelings which were curbed in vain;
Which absence never could uproot,
Nor even virtue render mute!
Rushing in one o'erwhelming flood,
As twice thou didst essay to speak,
They called, and chased again the blood
From thy pale lip and faded cheek,
Striving with calmness feigned to shew
Thy thoughts to me had ceased to flow.
Vainly, I knew it was not so:

A faltering voice, a trembling knee,
Told me thy heart still dwelt on me.
Can prudence virtue quell the will?
No Nature, Nature's stronger still!
Darkness was thy sight o'erveiling,
Thy knee beneath its weight was failing,
I feared thy spirit would depart,

I

sprang, I caught thee to my heart,

I gazed upon thee as we sat,

What sufferings soft that hour begat,

Oh! Myrrha, Myrrha, what an hour was that!"

After having read these lines, we are concerned that we can discover so few similar instances to justify us in moderating our previous sentence, or in advising Mr. St. Aubyn strictly "to meditate the muse." We do not believe it possible, where nature has not been somewhat more lavish of the "mens divinior," to create a real poet out of the simple materials of study and observation. Horace's maxim, "Poeta nascitur, non fit,” is in a great measure, if not altogether, true; and we would recommend it to the serious cogitation of Mr. St. Aubyn.

ART.

ART. VI. Travels, comprising Observations made during a Residence in the Tarentaise, and various Parts of the Grecian and Pennine Alps, and in Switzerland and Auvergne, in the Years 1820, 1821, and 1822. Illustrated by coloured Engravings, and numerous Wood-cuts, from original Drawings and Sections. By R. Bakewell, Esq. 2 Vols. 8vo. About 420 Pages in each. 11. 6s. Boards. Longman and Co. 1823.

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N introductory Treatise on Geology and Mineralogy, from the pen of the author of these volumes, attracted our favorable notice in vol. lxxxii. p. 164., and vol. xciv. p. 357.; and we have now to attend him and his fair partner on various excursions among the Alps of Savoy and Swisserland, and the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne. As he made Geneva his head-quarters during two successive winters, he could conveniently sally forth in summer, and pitch his tent on the spot most suited to the objects of his observations: his first point of rendezvous being the spacious and antique mansion of Château Duing, on Lake Annecy, where some very agreeable people were received as boarders, and contrived to pass their time very pleasantly. At Annecy, he perceived that the names of Saint François de Sales, and of La Mere Chantal, who was also canonized, were in far higher estimation than those of Rousseau and Madame de Warrens; and certainly, notwithstanding the malignant insinuations of the early reformers, who hint that the intimacy of these saints was something more than Platonic, De Sales possessed a mind above the superstition of his age, and adorned the exemplary discharge of his sacred functions with suavity of manners and the love of literature. With regard to the lady, we would not be so ungallant as to suppose that she who was led captive by his eloquence was destitute of taste or genius: but, in deserting her family for a life of cloistered devotion, she was certainly actuated by very erroneous views of religion.

Opposite to the château rise the mountains of Tournetts, to the height of about 7000 feet above the level of the sea; and besides these, the Dent d'Alençon, of which the summit is a mural ridge of lime-stone, though much less elevated, forms a conspicuous figure in the mountain-scenery of the lake. This delightful piece of water abounds in trout, carp, pike, and the Gadus lota, which Mr. Bakewell translates lotte, without seeming to be aware that it is the Burbot; and, when he says that he knows of no attempts which have been made to increase the varieties of our fresh-water fish by importing them from foreign countries, he probably forgot that neither the Carp nor the Crusian is indigenous to this island, and that the goldfish was originally conveyed from China. The naturalization

of

of several other species might, we are persuaded, be effected without much trouble or expence.

In the neighbourhood of the lake, or at the entrances of the valleys that open into its basin, are several old baronial castles; and, in the secluded village of alloires, an ample mansion proclaims the birth-place of Berthollet, the celebrated chemist. How singularly lamentable was the fate of his son !

Mr. B. jun. was a young man of superior talents, and his friends entertained high expectations of his future success ; but neither the rank to which his father had attained, his own brilliant prospects, nor the literary society and the amusements of Paris, could secure him from ennu, and a weariness of life, which at last became insupportable. He locked himself up in a small room, and closing all the apertures and crevices, he lighted a brasier of charcoal, and seated himself before a table, on which he had laid a seconds watch, with pen, ink, and paper. He then noted down with exactness the hour when the charcoal was lighted, the first sensations produced, and the progress of delirium, till the writing became confused and illegible, and he was found dead upon the floor.'

Two miles farther north is the Castle of Menthon, in which was born Saint Bernard, whose elopement from, not with, a fair lady of Château Duing, on the eve of the intended nuptials, that he might conscientiously devote himself to the priesthood, is recorded as a miracle; for, though he leapt from a window, he escaped unhurt. The two hospitals, which he founded for the reception of travellers crossing the Alps, have immortalized his name in the annals of humanity; and his eager solicitude to effect a reformation in the manners of the dignified clergy attests the worth and purity of his character. Faverge, a place which contains about 2000 inhabitants, is conjectured to stand on the site of Casuaria, whence Plancus wrote to Cicero. Here, having witnessed the hardships entailed on the people by the revival of the corvées, the author exclaims;

Such are the blessings of the legitimate and paternal governments which the allied powers bestowed on Savoy and the Italian states, in 1814, when they replaced them under the dominion of their ancient rulers, without any regard to the feelings, the wants, or the wishes of, the inhabitants, and then, as if in mockery, they styled themselves the liberators of Europe. With as much truth might the emperors of Fez and Morocco be styled the liberators of Africa.'

The valley of Thônes, which is seldom visited by the traveller, is highly romantic, and not destitute of a rural population. The Romans first opened a road into it, through a

narrow