no penetrating to his meaning. This is chiefly owing to the intolerable mass of verbiage in which his thoughts are clothed. A fondness for orientalisms and prettinesses of expression seems to be the besetting sin which he can never resist. It would appear to a reader of an unhacknied understanding, as if he thought poetry consisted altogether in metaphors; that simplicity and perspicuity of expression were beneath the dignity of the Muses; and that harmony of cadence, and musical numbers were mere incumbrances upon the wild freedom with which the nine deities should be permitted to drag us through all the entanglements and confusion of an ill-assorted, unconnected, and heterogenous mass of cogitations, conglomorated into one indefinable collection, by the wonderous instrumentality of that mighty father of discordance and grotesque originality, known by the name of haphazard.

We have, indeed, something more than conjecture for believ ing that Dr. Percival disdained to confine his Muse, when composing the greater part of the volume before us, within the bounds of accuracy, perspicuity and plain sense. We have it from under his own hand, recorded in one of his prefaces,* that he would look upon it as 66 a mournful task to distil off the vivida vis that comes out in the happy moments of excitement, and reduce the living materials to a caput mortuum of chaste and sober reason."

Thus, chaste and sober reason is to be banished from the regions of poetry, and branded with the degrading name of caput mortuum, which in English means, almost literally, blockheadism. But the Doctor's antipathy to correct poetical writing is still more pointedly asserted in the same preface. “I do not like," says he, "that poetry which bears the mark of the file and the burnisher." Well, indeed, would it be for all slovenly and lazy verse-makers, if the world should be infected with the same dislike for polished versification, and intelligible and solid sense. Then the prolix mystifications of the Haphazard poems might have some chance of becoming popular. Then might they write on ceaselessly, and with as much carelessness

See preface to the second part of "Prometheus," published in 1822.

and prolixity as they please, without being obliged, as Dr. Percival in his peculiar mystical way, expresses it, "when there is a quick swell of passion, to press it down to its solid quintescence." No, no, this would be utterly incompatable with the sublimity of the poet's function. Whatever flowers or fruits his productions may happen to bear, the weeds which cover them from sight, and the thorns which guard them from detection, must be cleared away by no hand but the reader's own, who must submit to the task without regard to either fatigue or danger, before he can reach the fruit, which, after all his pains, it is probable he will find worth nothing.

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But this writer goes on still more boldly to express his admiration of that confused and unsystematized style of poetry where meaning, when it can be found, is so difficult to be followed, that common patience cannot endure the toil; and of which the volume he has lately published affords too many examples. He says, "I like" (this elegant word like seems to be a favourite with him) "to see something savage and luxuriant in works of imagination, throwing itself out like the wild vines of the forest, rambling and climbing over the branches, and twining themselves into a maze of windings." Since such happens to be Dr. Percival's taste, he will meet with abundant gratification in the rhapsodical productions of John Neal, Esq. and some parts of Counsellor Philips's Speeches.

With such sentiments, it would be wrong to expect that Percival should treat us, in his effusions, with much of that polish, terseness, perspicuity, and neatness of composition, of which, we are old fashioned enough to confess ourselves admirers; and perhaps we should not blame him for not doing what he does not intend. But with his intentions we have no business. Here is his book before us. It is a tolerably large volume of poems, we have undertaken to criticise it, and we must do so as impartially as we can, without reference to the author's view's, intentions, prospects, connexions, or any other earthly consideration, except our duty to our own conscience and the public.

The first poem in the collection is in blank verse, and is entitled "The Wreck, a Tale." It contains many beautiful passa

ges, which sufficiently demonstrate that nature intended Dr. Percival for a poet; but the fostering of a bad taste has almost defeated her intentions, by leading him into a quaint and careless habit of versification, which renders the reading of his longer poems in particular, rather a task, than a recreation.

Dr. Percival must be sensible that poetry is generally read for pastime and pleasure, in times of relaxation from severer studies. The readers of it are, in consequence, rapid and frequently somewhat negligent in its perusal; at least, it is not one in ten of them, that can bear to have their faculties kept on the stretch in order to penetrate the poet's meaning. Force and ease, and, above every thing else, perspicuity should be studied both in the thoughts and the language. Now, although "the Wreck" does not offend quite so much in these particulars, as the poem which follows it, called "Prometheus," yet in perusing it, we felt under the unpleasant necessity of pausing in our progress and reperusing several passages, before we could exactly comprehend their meaning. That this was not altogether owing to our stupidity, we have reason to believe, from the circumstance of more than one of our friends whose acuteness of understanding is above the common level, having acknowledged to us the experiencing a similar difficulty. We do not deny that there is meaning in every passage of this poem, for we have always succeeded in detecting it when we were careful to bend our faculties to the task. What we complain of is, the necessi ty that obliged us to undertake this task, for like most other readers of poetry, we wish to read it at our ease.

Whether Dr. Percival had any model for his blank verse in view, when he first formed its structure, we cannot tell. From the predeliction for metaphysics and the Spenserian stanza, which he has manifested in the long poem of "Prometheus,” and from his avowed as well practical disregard of neat and correct versification, we might have supposed that he had Byron's style in view. But he differs from Byron in being less perspicuous, while he is more uniformly quaint and stately. He approaches nearer to the heavier, moralizing strain of Cowper. Indeed the tone of gloomy discontent, and morbid sensibility which

pervades the whole of this volume indicates a closer resemblance to the genius of the hypochondriacal Cowper, than to that of the cynical vituperative bard of the Age of Bronze." The blank verse of Cowper, however, although seldom mellifluous, is almost uniformly accurate in respect to numbers, and seldom lays the accent on short and unemphatic syllables, a practise of Percival dreadfully destructive of harmony. Besides, Cowper is seldom so very abstract or figurative as to involve his meaning in obscurity, a fault which is the very worst that a writer, who designs to write sense at all, can commit, and one of which Dr. Percival's best friends acknowledge that he is often guilty. Cowper also, with all his seriousness, often indulges in a sprightly satirical vein of humour, which relieves the reader from the plodding contemplations induced by the graver passages, and prevents him from becoming fatigued in their perusal. But we cannot recollect in the whole of the three hundred and ninety-six pages of which the volume before us consists, one single deviation into any thing like humour or wit, that can afford the mind relief from the horrors of the never ceasing melancholly and despondency, that continue their doleful lamentations from one end of the book to the other.

We must not, from these remarks, be supposed to have any hostility to grave and pathetic poetry. On the contrary, that poetry which pleases us more than any other, is the poetry of feeling; and we would not give up the parting of Hector and Andromache for the most sublime and fiery description of a battle or a debate in the whole Iliad. But then before it can please, the poetry of feeling must be given to us in strains both impressive and perspicuous. We cannot bear it when it is shrouded in metaphors or buried in metaphysics, and for the plain reason that we have then to search for its meaning.

To show our readers that we have good grounds for what we have said concerning the obscurity, and want of melody and force in Percival's blank verse, we extract the following brief sentence of only forty seven lines, from the "Wreck," with the assurance that it is, by no means the worst constructed that this poem

contains.

But nature still was in her, and she soon
Felt, that the fond affection of her sire,
And her lov'd tasks-the study of high thoughts,
Poured out in sainted volumes, which had been
Stamped in the mint of genius, and had come
Unhurt through darkest ages, bright as gems
That sparkle; though in dust-the skilful touch
Of instruments of music, and the voice
Sweet in its untaught melody, as birds
Clear warbling in the bushes, but attuned
To the just flow of harmony-the hand
That woke the forms of pencilld life, and gave
Its colour of the violet, and its fire

To the dark eye, its blushes to the cheek,
And the lip its sweetness; or that drew

O'er the pure lawn the silken thread, and wove
The full leafed vine, and the luxuriant rose,
All petals and vermillion-or the walk

On the rude shore, to hear the rushing waves,
Or view the wide sea-sleeping-on the hill
To catch the living landscape, and combine
The miracles of nature in one full

And deep enchantment-or to trace the brook
Up to its highest fountain in the shade

Of a thick tuft of alders, and go down

By all its leaps and windings gathering there
The forest roses, and the nameless flowers,

That open in the wilderness and live
Awhile in sweetest lovliness, and die
Without an eye to watch them, or a heart
To gladden in their beauty, or in that,
The fondest to the pure and delicate,
The gentle deed of charity, the gift
That cheers the widow, or dries up the flow
Of a lone orphan's bitterness, the voice
The melting voice of spmpathy, which heals,
With a far softer touch, the wounded heart,
Than the cold alms dropped by the scornful band,
That flings the dole it grudges—such but tears
Anew the closed wound open; while the friend,
Who smiles when smoothing down the lonely couch,
And does kind deeds which any one can do,

Who has a feeling spirit, such a friend
Heals with a gentle balsam ;-though her days
Passed on in such sweet labours, still she felt

Alone, and there was in her virgin heart

A void that all her pleasures could not fill.