Whoever can with satisfaction wade through such a mass of irrelevant and tautological clauses as this mamoth sentence exhibits, and, without fretting, suspend his curiosity to know its meaning until he arrives at the end of it, by which time he must have a truly miraculous memory, if he has not forgotten its beginning, must possess a degree of patient endurance with which, we confess, we are not gifted. We must also say, that whoever can discover in verses like the following, the accurate measurement of the five iambic feet, so essential to every line of blank verse where harmony is intended, must greatly surpass us in the knowledge of English prosody.

"Darts on a dove, and with a motionless wing."

But the poem of the "Wreck" contains some beautiful passages, which show that Percival has the faculty of thinking as a true poet, however much the influence of bad taste may have prevented him from expressing himself as such. We select the following.

"Youth is the time of love,

All other loves are lifeless, and but flowers

Wreathed round decay, and with a livid hue
Blowing upon a grave."

The following description of a stormy ocean, is equal to any thing of the kind in poetry.

"The waves still rolled tremenduously and bur t
Loud thundering on the rocks, they tossed the foam
High up the hills, and ploughed the moving sands,
Sweeping the fragments forth, then rushing back
With a devouring strength that cleared the shore."

The image which follows, is both beautiful and perspicuous; but placing the accent on such an unimportant word as the article a, injures the harmony, and it is a species of injury which Percival is too much in the habit of inflicting on his verses. "A few short steps, she paused, and then sank down,

As a flower sinks upon the new-mown turf."

The following easy change in the arrangement of the words would have obviated this awkwardness in the sound.

As sinks a flower upon the new-mown turf.

We admit that the former style is sometimes useful for the purpose of variety, as an occasional discord is agrecable in muVOL. I.-No. III.

31

sic; but discords too often repeated become intolerable, whether in music, poetry, or life; and Dr. Percival hesitates not to repeat them with unmerciful frequency in his verses.

We have laboured at the poem of "Prometheus" with heroic determination to read it through. It is divided into two parts, the first of which we managed to get over with great perseve rance; but the second completely knocked us up, and we abandoned the task in despair. Indeed, who that is made of flesh and blood, could bear to tug at upwards of two hundred such metaphysical, and almost unintelligible Spenserians as the following?

Love is attraction, and attraction, love

The meeting of two fond eyes, and the beat
Of two accordant pulses are above

Planets, that always tend, but never meet:
To us, that have a feeling, love is sweet,
The life of our existence, the great aim

Of all our hope and beauty-but they fleet,
Moments of fond endearment-years will tame
The electric throb of bliss, and quench the spirit's flame,

But yet there is to us a purer light,

And that is in the beautiful unfading,

The mould, wherein all phantoms of delight
Are fashion'd into loveliness; the shading

Of earth may give in softness, kindly aiding
The weakness of our feeble nature, while

Mine has not fledg'd its pinions; soon pervading

Space in its daring, as a long-sought isle,

It turns with naked gaze to that Eternal smile,

Whose charm is on the Universe, the blue

Mellow'd with light's full essence on the sphere
Wrapping us in its mantle, whence the dew
Falls clear and pearly, like a tender tear
Shed on the hues, that fade so quickly here,

But are awhile so beautiful-the sea,

That smooths its gold, or as the light winds veer,

Crisps it, or decks it o'er with stars- the sea

Takes all it hath to charm, Eternal Love! from thee.

The great fault of this poem is its heaviness and obscurity of expression. This is partly owing to its unfortunate versification,

and partly to the author's evident predilection for the profound in poetry, which, according to Martinus Scriblerus, delights in darkness.

There is in this volume, a doleful poem of nearly a hundred and fifty Elegiac stanzas, entitled the Suicide," which no one of weak nerves ought to attempt reading. We are, we believe, as seldom assailed by the "Azure Demons," to use a polite "to phrase, as most of our neighbours, but really we could not peruse this gloomy production without quivering under their torturing grip. As a poem, however, we think this superior to "Prometheus," because it is less mystical and diffuse, and because in the structure of its verses there are fewer violations of the laws of prosody. We extract some stanzas which really possess much poetic merit.

'Twas where a granite cliff high beetling towered
Above the billows of the wertern main,

Deep in a grot, by sable yews embowered
A youth retir❜d to ponder and complain.

Dark, sullen, gloomy as the scene around,
The soul that harbour'd in that youthful breast,
To him the wild roar was a soothing sound,
The only one could hush his woes to rest.

There was a savage sternness in his breast;
No half-way passion could his bosom move,
None e'er by him was scorn'd and then caressed;
His was all gloomy hate or glowing love.

And thou, arch moral murd'rer, hear my verse,
Go-gorge and wallow in thy priestly sty,
Than what thou art, I cannot wish the worse,

There with thy kindred reptile crawl and die !

We agree with Dr. Johnson that the ten syllable quatrain is too stately in its march, and susceptible of too little variety in its tone to be agreeable in a long poem. Next to the unwieldy

and monotonous Spenserian stanza we dislike this unbending quatrain, which, on account of its gloominess has obtained the appropriate appellation of the Elegiac stanza. Our language affords but one poem successfully written in it, namely, Gray's Elegy, the artist of which, however, did not disdain to employ in its manufacture a great deal of that care and labour which Dr. Percival professes to hold in such contempt. Gray's poem has also another unspeakable advantage for a production of this nature over Percival's, in not being one fifth part so long.

We may here observe, that as there is only one Elegiac quatrain poem in the language that we can read with unqualified approbation, so there is only one Spenserian that can afford us pleasure, that is Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." In this delightful production there is no prolixity to fatigue, no metaphysical wandering to perplex, no meretricious ornaments to overcloud, nor any straining at hyperbolical pomp to excite disgust. Every sentiment is natural, simple, and appropriate, and every expression easy, following, perspicuous, and harmonious; nor should it be forgotten among its other recommendations, that it occupies no reader more than ten minutes in the perusal. Would to Apollo, that we could say the same of every Spenserian poem in our language! But, ah!-what would then become of "The Faery Queen," of the Elder Bard, which it has been so long the fashion to praise, but never to read? What would become of it!-Why, we sincerely think that it is immaterial to the interests of English literature, what would become of it. There are few who derive any benefit from its perusal, for we really believe that there is not one individual in half a million who reads it at all, and the absurd fashion of praising it, has been, of late, extremely detrimental to the ease, harmony and elegance of our poetic style. Perhaps we have ventured too much in asserting that Spenser is so little read-but we are willing to abide by the expression. Dr. Percival, at least, cannot, with any good grace object to it; for should it be somewhat overstrained, we can point him out a thousand expressions in the volume before us incomparably more so. But we will go further and venture to assert that Dr. Percival himself, with all his admiration for the quaint inaccuracies of the Elizabethean bard, never read him through-as to Lord

Byron, who is the dubbed champion of Spenser's Muse, we do not think that he would take a thousand pounds to peruse the whole "Faery Queen." We really beleive that he would rather write five thousand stanzas in imitation of it.

Want of room prevents us from saying much of the smaller poem in this volume. There are some of them very beautiful, and some of them very metaphysical, and consequently very dull. The latter are principally in blank verse, a species of composition which no man of similar talents, ever wrote so awkwardly as Percival. In one or two pieces, he has adopted a most clumsy description of verse-one which even the genius of Burns could not make tolerable. The Scottish Bard indeed tried it but once namely, in his lamentation for the "Wounded Hare"-and finding that it limped almost as painfully as even the oject of his commiseration, he never tried it again. This measure is undeserving of a name; we shall therefore, give it none; and we ardently wish that it were eternally banished from the precincts of our poetry. The following is a specimen of it from Percival.

"There is a voice, and there is only one,
Thrilling my bosom, as if tuned on high
Amid the spheres revolving round the sky,
Whose roll is temper'd to the sweetest tone,
Whose blended harmonies are heard at night,
Now falling distant, now ascending nigh,
And with the saffron burst of dawning light,
Peal like the long loud clarion swell of fight,

When columns in the deadly charge rush by."

Whoever can discover in these lines either the sweetness of regular rhyme, or the majesty of well written blank verse, must have sensations extremely different from ours.

In some of his smaller pieces, however, where he has adopted a consistent and regular mode of rhyming, Percival is transcendently excellent. We here give a few specimens. They will shew that nature has endowed the author with the highest talents for poetry, and that cherishing an unfortunate taste for abstract sentimentalizing and uncouth versification alone has prevented him from equalling, if not surpassing the most pleasing and classical poets of our age.