Crystalina, a Fairy Tale, by an American, New-York, printed by George F. Hopkins. 1816. Duodecimo. p. p. 112.

This is the most splendid production, and one that offers, the most ample field for the varieties of criticism, that ever came before us. The powers of genius are sometimes as well measured and determined by the magnitude of its errours, as by its beauties. Every flight is an adventure, and it cannot be expected, that every adventure should succeed. The genius that would mount high enough to drink inspiration from its fountain, must always risk a proportionate descent: must always risk being blinded by its glory, or maddened by its heat. A spirit less ambitious, risks neither the one nor the other. Its flight is uniform: but though its plumes are never ruffled by a fall, they scatter no sunshine in their course. In the performance of our duty, we are sometimes called upon to gaze upon deadening uniformity-acres of mole hills-or worlds of wavering and indefinite lights and shadows-but we are more than compensated, when we can catch a glimpse of nature in her unbroken majesty, her Andes and her Alps-of the overwhelming sublimities of mind, when it assembles its mightiest imagery-of young genius, that nursling of the sun, when it soars amid the storm, hearkens to its thunders, and sports with its "arrowy lightning." In the poem before us, there is every variety to call forth our attention, and we shall endeavour to do it justice.

All who have thought upon the subject of Fairies and Goblins, and this sort of gentry, have no doubt assigned to them, in their imaginations, a form and size, something like Gulliver's Lilliputians. Their powers may be very great; but we have never conceived them to be so unlimited, as our bard has chosen to represent them. He loosens the tempest rather too often, and has appropriated to his poem too much of the vast machinery, which has been so long consecrated to the towering epic-that might iest offering which man can make to Apollo. We do not so much object to the use of all these powers, as to their employment on so vast a scale. Let the spirits of the air, of the earth, and of the ocean, be impressed into the service of Oberon-let the "thunder speak from his dark blue cloud-" let the lightnings shake their wings; but let all this be done in miniature.

We can produce passages from Crystalina, which have not been surpassed in our language. Spencer himself, who seemed to have condensed all the radiance of Fairy-land upon his starry page, never dreamed of more exquisitely fanciful scenery, than that which our bard has sometimes painted. Every step of Oberon's power demolishes as much of glittering magick, as the foot of mortal could do, in a bright morning, if every dew-drop were a palace. Had this poet written before Shakespeare and Spencer, he would have been acknowledged as the child of fancy; but now half his finest thoughts lose their impression, from the fear we feel, that they may have been borrowed. In the course of this review, we shall point out some very extraordinary resemblances between this writer's poetry, and that of some other moderns, which we have the charity to believe are purely accidental: for no being who could write as he has sometimes written from himself-no heart that was ever touched by the magick of invention, that was ever warmed by one sun-beam, from the genuine source of poesy, could stoop to borrow the most splendid thoughts or expressions, from the loftiest bard that ever shook his wild notes from the organ of minstrelsy. Some of these resemblances, we know, are not imitations; for we know that the passages were published simultaneously. Such instances are uncommon, and we feel rejoiced, that three native American poets can, each with equal justice, repel the charge of reciprocal imitation.

The radical defect of this poem, we take to be the consequence of the author's want of confidence in his own judgment: for no man who could stream such coruscations at the touch of poesy, as he has done, could mistake the feeble twinkling which he sometimes emits, for the flashes of genius. Had he dared to think for himself to blot out some passages, which his judgment, we are sure, could not have approved, the remainder would have done credit to the fancy of any poet, living or dead. We know that this is a high award, but we are not afraid of being able to support it, by the passages to which we shall call the attention of our readers.

We have not the pleasure to know this author, even by name; we shall speak of him therefore, as far as our abilities will permit, without the fear of being charged with partiality, on the one hand, or prejudice, on the other. It is not our intention to run a paral

lel between the author of Crystalina, and the Shakespear, or Spencer, or Dryden, or Milton of other countries-for they moved in a different world; their march was on the winds:

"Clouds were their chariots-and their coursers flame."

nor with Byron, who steps fearlessly into the midst of passion, and tumult, and madness, and controls them with the hand of destiny and of empire. We shall not compare our author with any of these, though he occasionally resembles them all. We shall not compare him with the author of our "Airs of Palestine;" a poem which has given the same independance to the genius of our country, that the revolution did to its government. Crystalina's author moves in a different creation, but he moves in as radiant a circle, and at as elevated a point, in his limited sphere, as any whom we have mentioned. His faults are numerous and great, but they arise from the luxuriance of his imagination.

The tale is briefly this: Rinaldo loves Crystalina, and his love is returned; but the maiden will not consent to wed him, until he shall have acquired glory "in danger's bloody paths." The knight covers himself with honours in many a battle, and flies to king Armigrand, her father, to claim his promised reward. Crystalina had strangely disappeared, and no traces were left of her probable fate. Rinaldo is at length directed to an aged Seer, a Necromancer, who discovers by his magick powers, that Oberon, the fairy king, had stolen her. The Seer then arms the knight with a cross, and some other consecrated weapons, and points out his way to Fairy-land. His adventures there are related; the temptations that crowded upon his senses the various stratagems and enchantments that Oberon makes use of to seduce, persuade, or terrify him; but the knight raises the cross, and all obstacles are annihilated. He finds his mistress, bears her away in triumph, and invites the Seer to return with him to the court of Armigrand. The Seer turns out to be his own father, and the earliest friend of the father of Crystalina; and thus the story is happily concluded. We come now to the poetry; when the knight meets the seer, the sun was setting:

Which night, advancing up the eastern sky
In dusky pomp, beheld with sparkling eye;
Behind the hills she stay'd her ebon car,

Withheld her moon, and muffled every star."

The "warrior tall," and "petrifactions white," and "pebbles clean," in page 39, are perfectly contemptible-such epithets are absolute antipodes to all dignity, beauty, and precision.

Neither Shakespear, nor any other flashing spirit of the days that have gone by, ever looked upon morning, with more of the fullness of poetry, than our author has done, in the following glorious lines:

"Thrice hath yon moon her pearly chariot driven,
Across the starry wilderness of Heaven

In lonely grandeur; thrice the morning star

Danc'd on the eastern hills before Hyperion's car."

The Knight relates his approach to the home of his mistress, af ter his return from the wars-it was evening:

"On spire and turret glanc'd the setting sun,
And the proud pile in all its glory shone;
While groves of myrtle glimmer'd on my sight,
And from their foliage shook a quiv'ring light.”

Numerous portents had scattered their shadows over his anticipations: every sound seemed the presage of the disappointment of his hopes-in that state of mind, the following description of his feelings, is natural and fine:

"I trembled, sighed and wept, I knew not why-
The wild birds' warblings, musical and clear,
Seem'd mournful dirges to my listening ear"-

We cannot agree to the propriety of introducing the convulsive throes of nature-the burstings of volcanick mountains-to describe a bosom swelling with grief: the comparison is too common, and too disproportionate-The strength of Scotland's barriers is finely painted in the following lines:

"Where mountains huge the rushing storms deride,
And turn the glancing thunderbolts aside."

There is genuine poetry, in the description of the effect produced by the incantations of the Seer; particularly in the picture of the demon, who

"Flapp'd his black wings, and brush'd the creeping flame

From his grim face."

Every lover of poetry will feel the beauty of the following lines:

"The mountain reel'd, and from its tossing head
The affrighted tyger and the wild wolf fled,
Whilst loosen'd rocks came tumbling from on high,
And blazing meteors shot athwart the sky.
Awhile the seer, with stern, unalter'd face
Survey'd unmoy'd the horrours of the place;
Then from the wall his aged harp he took,
String after string, with solemn hand he strook,
With low, wild prelude, gently he began,
And o'er the cords, with careless finger ran;
But when Rinaldo lean'd his anxious ear,
The old man's magick minstrelsy to hear,
With bolder hand the necromantic sage
Wak'd loftier tones, and rous'd poetick rage,
Till on the harp, impatient of control,

Impetuous rush'd the tempest of his soul."

What follows is very much after the manner of Pope:

"So from some mountain's high and hoary brow,

A loosen'd crag starts silently and slow,

But gaining force, more furiously it bounds,

The mountain thunders, and the vale resounds-
The vaulted roof and dark recesses rung,

As wildly thus the hoary minstrel sung.—

The "quaking fen," the "driving air," and the "wormy bed" of the corpse, are all admirable; and the line which follows, we think, has never been surpassed:

"The clouds sailed by like a routed fleet."

The whole of the following picture is exquisitely drawnwhile the hermit continued to sing to his "wizard lyre:"