With this preamble, Mr. JEFFREY is introduced to the reader, in a critique upon 'The Tempest, by WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE: 4to. London: 1612. After the dissertation upon ' matters and things in general' with which it is customary to open the labored papers of quarterly journals, the reviewer reaches at length the work which he is to criticise, and upon which he pounces in manner following, to wit:'

THE present play forms a sort of connecting link between the ancient mysteries and the modern drama, and, disregarding equally with these venerable monstrosities all rules of probability and taste, merely changes the abstractions into persons as shadowy, and their miracles into marvels altogether as amazing and edifying. In other respects, we are rather inclined to think that Mr. SHAKSPEARE has outdone the native absurdity of the originals.

The play opens with a conversation among some sailors in a ship sinking at sea, which is quite in the taste of these refined persons; others come in wet, which is at least as new on the stage as a ship foundering; then a confused noise is heard within:

We split! we split farewell my wife and children!
Brother, farewell! we split! we split! we split!'

'The author has here most happily expressed confusion, by not indicating to whom these separate speeches are to be given.

The next scene is on an enchanted island, where a young lady called Miranda is entreating her father, Prospero, to allay the storm, of which she gives this splendid description:

The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out

Prospero replies:

Be collected:

No more amazement: tell your piteous heart
There's no harm done.'

'To this consolatory piece of intelligence Miranda most singularly answers, O wo the day!' and Prospero rejoins, No harm; wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort. From all which it would appear that Miranda was crying because nobody had been drowned. Prospero then bids her obey, and be attentive.' He relates that, just twelve years before, he was the Duke of Milan, but that his brother had usurped his dignity; and that himself and his daughter, having been put into a rotten carcass of a boat,' arrived safely at the island. But this interesting story is by no means so briefly told in the play, and is, moreover, perpetually interrupted in its course, after this fashion:

PROSPERO. My brother, and thy uncle, called Antonio;

I pray thee mark me- thy false uncle

Dost thou attend me?

MIRANDA. Sir, most heedfully.

PROS. Thou attend'st not.

But, all this having nothing to do with the storm, Miranda very properly puts the question:

'And now I pray you, Sir,

(For still 't is beating in my mind,) your reason

For raising this sea storm.'

To which Prospero returns the following very clear and intelligible answer:

Know thus far forth.

By accident most strange, bounteous fortune,
Now, my dear lady, hath mine enemies
Frought to this shore; and by my prescience

I know my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star, whose induence,

If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.'

He seems well convinced, however, of the natural effect of this kind of poetry, for he adds:

Here cease more questions.

Thou art inclined to sleep. "Tis a good heaviness,
And give it way. I know thou canst not choose.'

In which opinion all Mr. SHAKSPEARE's readers will readily concur.

We could wish that we had space for the equally interesting and refreshing satire upon 'a spirit called ARIEL,' the dialogue between whom and PROSPERO is turned into ridicule. We must pass on, however, to the assassination of the character of CALIBAN, that wonderful creation of the great bard. Does the reader remember any thing more

moment, interchange a few dulcet words, tell each other 'how sweetly pretty you look to-night,' and present for a moment a lovely picture of child-like simplicity and utter guilelessness-to the respective cavaliers and observers in general.'

LITERARY NOTICES.

DONNA FLORIDA A TALE. By the Author of 'Atlantis,' 'Southern Passages and Pictures,' etc. Charleston: BURGESS AND JAMES.

'THE poem,' says the author of this miniature pamphlet-volume, of which the four first cantos (he means the first four, no doubt) are here submitted to the reader, was chiefly the work of the writer's youth.' He does not claim, however, that this fact forms any sufficient excuse for giving it to the public at this late day; but offers rather the natural tenacity' with which the mind treasures up, and seeks to preserve, the performances which revive its early associations.' We have run through these cantos with some attention. The story does not strike us as possessing either great originality or interest. The verse itself is after the model of Don Juan,' then recently published, and rife in the literary world; but like the thousand-and-one imitations which we have encountered of that most facile and felicitous composition, its 'laborious ease' cannot be concealed. With BYRON, the play of fancy and of words was equally unconstrained, in this species of versification; but all his imitators have evidently been stretched upon Procrustean beds; and with all the seeming abandon of their manner, and the smirk of their ' varnished faces,' it has yet been but too evident that their situation was any thing but comfortable. In 'Donna Florida' however there is a good degree of cleverness. There are many thoughts interspersed throughout its cantos which the reader will encounter with surprise and remember with pleasure. Nevertheless we are compelled to say, that where the stanzas are most original, they are the least to our liking. We enter our protest against the writer's frequent habit of saying a plain thing in an involved, roundabout way, as well as against numerous words and similes which he employs. You can call a hat,' says Mr. YELLOWPLUSH, a 'glossy four-and-nine' or a 'swart sombrero;' but in the long run praps it's as well to call it a hat. It is a hat; and where's the use o' mystifying? Would it not, for example, be 'as well' also, and quite as natural, to write 'half of the rest,' as 'the subdivision of the remaining moïety?' Or in saying that old jokes were laughed at, to express it in less magniloquent phrase than

'Old jokes found revivified expansion?'

Where does Mr. SIMMS find authority for such a word as 'voicing?'. '-'the voicings of a bird?' In any dictionary of the English language? Guess not! As little do we admire the simile which makes a lady's eye the 'polar light in love's astrology,' or which represents it as

'peering beneath her forehead like a star, Bestowing a sweet glory on the sky.'

All these are 'affectations, look you;' and are in our judgment even worse sins against

taste (to say nothing of truth) than the occasional instances of an opposite tendency which might be pointed out; such as the beast enjoying his grunt and stye;' or the coy damsel, of whom the writer says:

'One moment grows she most abruptly willing,
The next, she slaps the chaps that think of billing!'

We should not have felt ourselves justified in passing unnoticed the defects which we have indicated; the more that the following stanzas evince the ability of the writer, when he gives to natural thoughts their natural expression, to avoid these and kindred

errors:

'GLANCING my vision o'er the world's affairs,

Surveying this and that, of strange and common,
Its double singles and divided pairs,

Its human brutes and brutes that might be human,
All vexing life with sad and fruitless cares,

Yet all made agents of that creature, woman;
I've come to this conclusion: that 't were better
If we poor bachelors had never met her.

6 Better we had not seen and could not fancy
So sad and strange conception; could not want
Her presence, nor beneath her neeromancy

Feel the torn bosom and vex'd pulses pant,
With dreams and hopes that not a step advance ye
To health or happiness, but rather daunt,
At each impassion'd move, the weary spirit,
That sees the joy receding as we near it.

'Better in single blessedness had Adam,

Stout father-farmer, in his garden trod;
Unvexed by daily strife with maid or madam,
And free to eat his fruit and meet his God:
I'm sure his fate had not been half so sad-am
Certain he had not then been thrust abroad
With breeches made of fig-leaves, quickly rended,
More quickly than his wife could get them mended.

'Have you not seen her in the public way,

Snare-setting? In the ball-room marked her eyes,
Pursuing, like a very snake's, her prey?

And vainly would he dodge them, and be wise!

In flight alone is safety. Do you stray

Beside her, when the moon is in the skies?

Or by the brooklet, or along the sea,

Or in the garden, parlor, buttery?'

'Do you stray beside her in the-buttery! Does not this word 'buttery' seem impressed for the sake of oddity and the rhyme? To our apprehension and ear it is objectionable, alike in truth and in sound; scarcely less so, indeed, than the close of the annexed lines, which require no comment. DON PONCE, a Spanish knight,

Had passed his days in stupor most sublime,
His nights in deep allegiance to his pillow;
Untroubled by the crown, the church-bell's chime,
Sleep, garlic, wine, and oil, a constant fill o'!'

In prose as well as in verse Mr. SIMMS, by common consent of his critics, fails in the humorous. It is not his rôle. How much more creditable, even than the foregoing, are the subjoined stanzas, illustrating the fact that it is mental and not physical suffering which constitutes the pain of death; the 'parting from those who loved and love us :'

'And when the lamp of life upon a verge
Unseated as a vision, sinks at last;
And when the spirit launches on the surge
Of that dark, drear, unfathomable vast
We call eternity, its latest dirge

Bemoans not pangs, still pressing, not o'erpast,
But that all natural things, forms, stars, and skies,
And the more loved than all, are fading from its eyes.

"Thus still beloved, though all relentless fair,

I part from thee and perish. Never more
Shall I win sweetness from the desolate air,
Or find a fragrant freshness in the shore;
The sea that images my deep despair

Hath still a kindred language in its roar,
And in the clouds that gather on our lee
A mournful likeness to my soul I see.

The sense of life grows dim; the glories pass,
Like those of melting rainbows from my sight;
Dark aspects rise as in the wizard's glass,
Reflect my inner soul, and tell of night;
Glooms gather on my vision, in a mass,

And all my thoughts, beheld in their dread light,
Rise like unbidden spectres; rise to rave

Above the heart, which soon may be their grave.'

The purpose of the author to preserve this youthful effort of his muse from oblivion, by giving it in a printed form to the public, will not, we may believe, be subserved; for although portions of it are undeniably clever, yet as a whole it lacks the elements of life; a fact, indeed, of which the writer himself seems sufficiently aware, if we interpret aright the long introduction with which he has deemed it necessary to preface a short poem. The little volume, which is very neatly executed, is dedicated to one who is himself well qualified to appreciate, and on occasion to produce, good poetry-JAMES LAWSON, Esq., of this city.

CHANGE FOR THE AMERICAN NOTES: in Letters from London to New-York. By an American Lady. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

WHO jeers the Tartar, must beware of his dirk!' is a lesson which this well-tempered book will teach certain of our neighbors on the other side of the great water; for it contains stabs at national abuses and local follies, which 'pierce to the hilt;' and we are not sorry that at this moment, throughout the Union, this exposition of them as well as of the time-honored game of 'tit-for-tat,' has been as widely perused as the work which prompted it- the 'American Notes' of Mr. DICKENS. This fact, we need not add, will prevent us from entering upon a detailed review of a work already so current, at the low price of one shilling. We shall only ask such of our readers as are at all sensitive in relation to the slurs upon our country and its institutions which may from time to time reach us from abroad, to bear in mind the ignorance in which they have their origin. One ought to have,' says our countrywoman, 'a temper as imperturbable as FRANKLIN'S, to hear patiently the absurd remarks made in England upon the United States. Here are hundreds of thousands, with ample means and leisure, whose reading is confined to certain portions of certain newspapers; yet one of this class will deliver his judgment upon America in a manner which shows his belief that what he says is decisive. There is, there should be, no appeal. He has spoken. Englishmen have a vague notion about America, and Indians, and General WASHINGTON, and there being neither king nor lords, and the storming of Quebec, and the burning of the Caroline, and the loss of the President! But as to the vast resources of our country; the nature of her laws and institutions; of her cities rising amid primeval forests; of the capabilities of her rivers and bays; of the love of freedom in her children, which love, men say, is the parent of all the best virtues that can adorn a state; of these things they know