What heart so cold that of thy fame has heard
And pauses not to gaze upon each scene.

We are inclined to be very indulgent to what is called a confusion of metaphors, when it arises from a rush of ideasbut when it is produced by an author's having no idea at all, we can hardly forgive him for equipping the Heart with eyes, ears, and legs:-he might just as well have said that on entering Twickenham church to visit the tomb, every Heart would take off its hat, and on going out again would put its hand in its pockets to fee the sexton.

And pauses not to gaze upon each scene
That was familiar to thy raptured view,
Those walks beloved by thee while I pursue,
Musing upon the years that intervene

Why this line intervenes or what it means we do not see-it seems inserted just to make up the number

Methinks, as eve descends, a hymn of praise
To thee, their bard, the sister Seasons raise!

That is, as we understand it, ALL the Seasons meet together on one or more evenings of the year, to sing a hymn to the memory of Thompson. This simultaneous entree of the Four Seasons would be a much more appropriate fancy for the opera stage than for Twickenham meadows.

Such are the tame extravagances-the vapid affectations— the unmeaning mosaic which Mr. Moxon has laboriously tesselated into fifty and four sonnets. If he had been-as all this childishness at first led us to believe a very young man-we should have discussed the matter with him in a more conciliatory and persuasive tone; but we find that he is, what we must call, an old offender. We have before us two little volumes of what he entitles poetry-one dated 1826, and the other 1829-which, though more laughable, are not in substance more absurd than his new production. From the first of these we shall extract two or three stanzas of the introductory poem, not only on account of their intrinsic merit, but because they state, pretty roundly, Mr. Moxon's principles of poetry. He modestly disclaims all rivalry with Pope, Byron, Moore, Campbell, Scott, Rogers, Goldsmith, Dryden, Gray, Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare; but he, at the same time, intimates that he follows, what he thinks, a

truer line of poetry than the before-named illustrious, but, in this point, mistaken individuals.

'Tis not a poem with learning fraught,

To that I ne'er pretended;

Nor yet with Pope's fine touches wrought,
From that my time prevented.

We skip four intermediate stanzas; then comes

But as

Milton divine and great Shakespeare

With reverence I mention ;

My name with theirs shall ne'er appear,
'Tis far from my intention !

If poetry, as one pretends,

Be all imagination!

Why then, at once, my bardship ends—
'Mong prose I take my station.

Moxon's Poems, p. 81, Ed. 1826.

common sense" must see, says Mr. Moxon, that imagination can have nothing to do with poetry, he engages to pursue his tuneful vocation, subject to one condition

You'll hear no more from me,
If critics prove unkind;

My next in simple prose must be,
Unless I favour find!

We regret that some kind-or, as Mr. Moxon would have thought it, unkind—critic, did not, on the appearance of this first volume, confirm his own misgivings that he had been all this time, like the man in the farce, talking not only prose, but nonsense into the bargain: this disagreeable information the pretension of his recent publication obliges us to convey to him. The fact is, that the volume at first struck us with serious alarm. Its typographical splendour led us to fear that this style of writing was getting into fashion; and the hints about "classic Cam" seemed to impute the production to one of our Universities on turning, with some curiosity, to the title-page, for the name of the too indulgent bookseller who had bestowed such unmerited embellishment on a work which we think of so little value-we found none; and on further inquiry learned that Dover Street, Piccadilly, and not the banks of "classic Cam," is the seat of this sonneteering muse-in short, that Mr. Moxon, the bookseller, is his own

poet, and that Mr. Moxon, the poet, is his own bookseller. This discovery at once calmed both our anxieties-it relieved the university of Cambridge from an awful responsibility, which might have called down upon it the vengeance of Lord Radnor; and it accounted-without any imputation on the public taste for the extraordinary care and cost with which the paternal solicitude of the poet-publisher had adorned his own volume. Mr. Moxon seems to be-like most sonneteers- -a man of amiable disposition, and to have an ear-as he certainly has a memory-for poetry; and—if he had not been an old hand-we should not have presumed to say that he is incapable of anything better than this tumid commonplace. But, however that may be, we do earnestly exhort him to abandon the self-deluding practice of being his own publisher. Whatever may have been said in disparagement of the literary taste of the booksellers, it will at least be admitted that their experience of public opinion and a due attention to their own pecuniary interest, enable them to operate as a salutary check upon the blind and presumptive vanity of small authors. The necessity of obtaining the "imprimatur" of a publisher is a very wholesome restraint, from which Mr. Moxon-unluckily for himself and for usfound himself relieved. If he could have looked at his own work with the impartiality, and perhaps the good taste, that he would have exercised on that of a stranger, he would have saved himself a good deal of expense and vexation— and we should have been spared the painful necessity of contrasting the ambitious pretensions of his volume with its very moderate literary merit.

ON "VANITY FAIR" AND "JANE EYRE"

[From The Quarterly Review, December, 1848]

1. Vanity Fair; a Novel without a Hero. By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. London, 1848.

2. Jane Eyre; an Autobiography. Edited by CURRER BELL. In 3 vols. London. 1847.

A REMARKABLE novel is a great event for English society. It is a kind of common friend, about whom people can speak the truth without fear of being compromised, and confess their emotions without being ashamed. We are a particularly shy and reserved people, and set about nothing so awkwardly as the simple art of getting really acquainted with each other. We meet over and over again in what is conventionally called "easy society," with the tacit understanding to go so far and no farther; to be as polite as we ought to be, and as intellectual as we can; but mutually and honourably to forbear lifting those veils which each spreads over his inner sentiments and sympathies. For this purpose a host of devices have been contrived by which all the forms of friendship may be gone through, without committing ourselves to one spark of the spirit. We fly with eagerness to some common ground in which each can take the liveliest interest, without taking the slightest in the world in his companion. Our various fashionable manias, for charity one season, for science the next, are only so many clever contrivances for keeping our neighbour at arm's length. We can attend committees, and canvass for subscribers, and archæologise, and geologise, and take ether with our fellow Christians for a twelvemonth, as we might sit cross-legged and smoke the pipe of fraternity with a Turk for the same period-and know at the end of the time as little of the real feelings of the one as we should about the domestic relations of the other. But there are ways and means for lifting the veil which equally favour our national idiosyncrasy; and a new and remarkable novel is one of them— especially the nearer it comes to real life. We invite our neighbour to a walk with the deliberate and malicious object

of getting thoroughly acquainted with him. We ask no impertinent questions-we proffer no indiscreet confidences -we do not even sound him, ever so delicately, as to his opinion of a common friend, for he would be sure not to say, lest we should go and tell; but we simply discuss Becky Sharp, or Jane Eyre, and our object is answered at once.

"

There is something about these two new and noticeable characters which especially compels everybody to speak out. They are not to be dismissed with a few commonplace moralities and sentimentalities. They do not fit any ready-made criticism. They give the most stupid something to think of, and the most reserved something to say; the most charitable too are betrayed into home comparisons which they usually condemn, and the most ingenious stumble into paradoxes which they can hardly defend. Becky and Jane also stand well side by side both in their analogies and their contrasts. Both the ladies are governesses, and both make the same move in society; the one, in Jane Eyre phraseology, marrying her master," and the other her master's son. Neither starts in life with more than a moderate capital of good looks-Jane Eyre with hardly that-for it is the fashion now-a-days with novelists to give no encouragement to the insolence of mere beauty, but rather to prove to all whom it may concern how little a sensible woman requires to get on with in the world. Both have also an elfish kind of nature, with which they divine the secrets of other hearts, and conceal those of their own; and both rejoice in that peculiarity of feature which Mademoiselle de Luzy has not contributed to render popular, viz., green eyes. Beyond this, however, there is no similarity either in the minds, manners, or fortunes of the two heroines. They think and act upon diametrically opposite principles -at least so the author of " Jane Eyre" intends us to believe —and each, were they to meet, which we should of all things enjoy to see them do, would cordially despise and abominate the other. Which of the two, however, would most successfully dupe the other is a different question, and one not so easy to decide; though we have our own ideas upon the subject.

We must discuss "Vanity Fair" first, which, much as we were entitled to expect from its author's pen, has fairly taken us by surprise. We were perfectly aware that Mr. Thackeray had of old assumed the jester's habit, in order the more