sympathy. To that divine communion which exists between kindred spirits, to that sympathy which is the offspring of mentalized and spiritualized feelings, and to all the milder affections which give them character and expression, he is a perfect stranger. His sympathies are what naturally results from his physical propensities, or constitutional temperament, and therefore, the Scotch poets are generally natural, but seldom refined. They write, it is true, as they feel: so far they are right, for feeling is the soul of poetry; but as their feelings are gross, their poetry must be equally so. Such was the poetry of Burns, and such is now the poe try of Cunningham. Mr. Campbell is the only exception, we know of, to the observations which we have made, for, however intimate the Scotch baronet may be with the fairy lands of imagination, he is a true sawny with regard to delicacy and refinement of feeling. In general, Scotch poets will be found to resemble Dutch painters: they excel only in describing low life, or rather, in caricaturing it. It is not human nature they describe, but some ludicrous deviation from it. They describe manners, not passions, but so far as the description is true, it must be considered natural, however widely the originals which they copy may be at variance with nature. We do not mean to say that the northern poets do not some. times describe, natural as well as na tional manners, but we mean to say, that they excel more in the latter, and that they seldom give us a picture of natural manners without enriching it, as they think, with national sentiment. At any rate, whether they describe natural or national manners, they al ways describe low manners, and conse quently the resemblance between them and Dutch painters will always bold good; for Sir W. Scott himself, the most favoured of their bards, is a mere describer of low national manners.

We are not therefore to be surprized, if Mr. Conningham has not surmounted this predeliction for low manners, which characterises all the poets of his coun try, Mr. Campbell excepted. We are far from wishing to depreciate his talents: his genius is original, though confined to one species of poetic excel. lence. We do not know that he imi tates the style or manner of any of his countrymen, but he has caught the downward spirit that animates them all. The subject of all his songs, are the love-sick breathings of the Scotch peasantry; but we must confess, we could never discover much nature or true Eur. Mag. Vol, 82.

feeling in professed amatory writers. Perhaps the reason may be, that in love there is no medium between beauty and deformity. The language of love is the language of passion, and passion always tells truth. A real lover, there. fore, never speaks but what he feels, though he generally feels more than he can venture to express. He, who imitates the true lover, must use the same language, though he wants the same feelings.

Both

But how difficult is it to express feelings which we do not feel, and with which, consequently, we must be unacquainted. He, who describes love without feeling it, resembles a blind man describing colours. describe what they know nothing about, and, consequently, they have no certainty of being right but while they travel in the footsteps of others. In mere imitation, however, there can be no novelty, and without imitation there can be no certainty. Now admitting that an amatory poet, such as Mr. Cunningham, should possess from nature a considerable portion of natural feeling, how is it possible that he can be in love with every new lassie and bonnie lady to whom he professes an attachment? True love is constant and fixed to one object, and, therefore, there is much reason to doubt the sincerity of him, who is in love with a great many at the same time. Hence it is that those, who make a trade of love-songs, seldom succeed in them; they generally substitute false sentiment and unnatural feeling for the genuine effusions of the heart, because these effusions can only be described by those who feel them. We must confess, at the same time, that though these observations apply more or less to Mr. Cunningham, as well as to all other love-poets, (if we make any exception, it must be in favor of Moore) many of his songs are extremely tender and affecting, and as refined as we can expect them to be, coming from Scotch shepherds and swains. But still he frequently outsteps the modesty of nature: he makes his lovers say; or he says himself for them, what no person who really felt the passion would ever think of saying. A lover never thinks of saying any thing but what his passion suggests; as passion, then, would have never suggested the following far-fetched idea, it is ridiculous to suppose it the language of love. Indeed the whole stanza is a true specimen of the false sublime.

"My love's two eyes are bonnie stars, Born to adorn the summer skies,

31

And I will by our triste-thorn sit
To watch them at their evening rise;
That, when they shine on tower and tree,
Their heav'nly light may fall on me."

Whenever Mr. Cunningham falls into an error of this kind, it arises from the untamed energies of a restless and obtrusive imagination, which perpetually seeks to carry him away from the direct object of his affections to remote images and fanciful situations. Thus he confounds the intense pathos of love with the luxuriant associations of imagination, but in doing so, he only deceives himself, not his mistress. A woman immediately begins to sus. pect her lover the moment he begins to raise her to the skies. She knows well, she has no claim to so elevated a situation, and she also knows, that true love deals not in images of any kind. The feelings of the heart bear no analogy to, and consequently cannot be typified by, sensible representations. If the creations of fancy be at all tolerable in a love-song, it must be in the opening of it, were it may serve as an introduction to the ensuing scene. But when passion once begins to speak, imagination must be silent. For this reason we admire the following stanza, with which our author commences one of his love-songs.

When we say that the creations of fancy should be religiously excluded from the language of passion, we confine our observation to shorter pieces, such as songs, &c. for the lover who has not much to say, should reserve it all for his mistress, and not waste it in idle and gratuitous declamation: and even in poems of greater length, fancy should never be indulged except where it seems to force itself upon the lover, and to heighten the depth and intense. ness of his misery. Whenever it appears to result from a light aud buoyant imagination, instead of heightening it destroys the pathetic, and consequently the poetic effect.

We have dwelt on Mr. Cunningham's songs, as we believe he owes to them the greater portion of his poetic fame. In Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, it is true, there are many beautiful passages;at least we should call them beautiful,

if we were permitted to take the poem in pieces, and judge of every member by itself. But, unhappily, considering it as a whole, there is little dependance on harmony between its parts. He excels more in execution and colouring than in original design, and his mind seems never to wander beyond the immediate scene before him. Neither in the classification of facts, nor in the union, harmony or proportion of parts, does he manifest himself a skil-, ful artist; and without these qualities of dramatic excellence, all others are thrown into the shade.

The subject of this poem is the murder of Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, by Halbert Comyne, one of his own kins men and retainers, who usurped his castle and estate, but afterwards fell by the hand of his son, the Young Sir Marmaduke. The story derives a considerable portion of its interest from the amours of Sir Marmaduke with the beautiful Mary Douglas, the parliamentary war in Scotland, Mag Morison, the pretty waiting-maid, and Mabel Moran, the witch. The scene is laid in" the beautiful but ruinous castle of Caerlaverock, on the Scottish side of the sea of Solway; and the time of the story is the close of the Commonwealth, under the Second Cromwell.”

3

Instead of the language of true pas sion, we have cold and inflated sentiment. The author is continually in the clouds, even when his business is to describe the secret workings of love, and we have no hesitation to say, that there is not a poem in the English Janguage of equal length, except the subject be astronomy, in which the "stars" are so frequently introduced, though we cannot see what analogy there is between love and the stars. . -Sir Marmaduke, however, seems to have been of a different opinion, for he counted nearly all the stars in the West while he was waiting for his mistress. This, to us, would not appear as a test of his affection; and we think, also, he paid his mistress no compliment in telling her of it; for if his thoughts were fixed upon her, be certainly could not employ them in counting the stars. Mary Douglas seems also to think the stars busy themselves in love-affairs, for she apprehends they may “turn tell-tales," and disclose their secrets.

Again, she is afraid some star has fallen in love with Sir Marmaduke; and Sir Marmaduke tells her, that "he will be to her a fon

"True as these stars are to the cold, clear sky

ཁ་

Lectures on the Art of Writing. By J. Carstairs, Writing Master. 8vo. pp. 189. 12s. Fifth Edition.

This very useful book has arrived at the fifth edition, and, although it is not usual with us to notice new editions, unless they contain much additional matter, on this occasion we think we consult the interest of our readers by so deviating from our usual course. This volume contains, amongst other matter, observations on the impediments that retard the progress of pu pils who learn to write by means of the old method. It includes a brief history of the art, and of the materials that have been in use from the earliest ages to the present time. There are twenty-two plates, which are elucidated by pertinent observations,

Among the multiplicity of improvements that are continually introduced into our mechanic arts, the improvements in the art of penmanship, by Mr. Carstairs, ought to be mentioned with unqualified approbation-by the assistance of his method, which principally consists in the looping of letters and words together, any person however bad his writing, will acquire purity, precision, and celerity in a very few lessons. We should like to see this book introduced into all respecta ble academies, being assured that the principles of writing inculcated by Mr. Carstairs could not fail to be beneficial to the rising generation, as well as to the majority of adults. We are glad to hear that this new system has been found successful wherever it has been tried; and we hope the industrious author will not be less benefitted than he ought to be, for he has evidently bestowed much labour, and exhibited great ingenuity in maturing a system which teaches pupils of all ages, and both sexes, to write well in one-twentieth part of the time they usually consume in learning to write ill. We recommend our readers to examine the

work, for we are persuaded they will be amply gratified, the process of instruction is so peculiarly simple, novel, and curious. Instead of writing from left to right, the mode constantly pursued in schools from the commencement to the end of instruction, Mr.. Carstairs' plan is to make the learner begin at the top of the page and write in a perpendicular direction down the whole length of the page, without lifting the pen, in columns of single letters, and gradually increasing the number of letters from left to right, until the pupil becomes a proficient in the art, which mode must counteract the natural tendency which beginners have of leaning too heavily on the right arm. Mr. Carstairs' method of holding the hand and pen is surely a desideratum in the art, and will tend to lessen the labour of teachers in making their pupils hold the hand and pen correctly. From our own observations on Mr. Carstairs' Lectures, we feel no hesitation in recommending his valuable system to the notice of all, especially those who are employed in teaching penmanship in our scholastic establishments.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater. 12mo. pp. 206. 5s.

This work is the offspring of an accurate and vigorous pen; it is divided into two parts, of which the second alone has any relation to opium-eating, and it may be described as ingenious, and containing descriptions of actual sensations, which will, we apprehend, pass with most as the merc fictions of a vigorous fancy: but of the first part we must acknowledge, that, if to awaken the most lively feelings of curiosity and tenderness without effort, and without matter adapted to pathos, be a proof of superior genius, the author of these confessions is undoubtedly entitled to a high degree of commendation from the critic. The first part of the Confessions relate to the author's boyish days! The death of his father, his being left to the care of four guardians, his precoce profici ency in classic lore, and his contempt for his masters. At sixteen the author feels an unexampled fervour to enter the classic halls of Oxford, but sues in vain to "the haughty, obstinate, and intolerant" man, who, of the four nominated guardians, was the only one who would consent to act in that capacity. According to the dramatist and novellist, a crabbed guardian of a young lady is in natura rerum a cause

of a love elopement, and it would appear from the history of our Opiumeater, that a "haughty, obstinate, and intolerant" guardian of a young gentleman is in natura rerum a justification of the said young gentleman's running away from school and plunging into vagrancy and the lowest vice. The Opium-eater, being thwarted by his guardian in his desire of going to college, runs away from school with ten pounds in his pocket, and lives in a Welch cottage. As he describes his guardian as " a worthy man in his way," we cannot but reprobate the elopement as a very unworthy way of streating a worthy man-or indeed of treating any man placed in such sacred authority over him. We can, however, view this as a mere boyish indiscretion, whilst he was living in a Welch cottage, amidst innocence, cleanliness, and health, and beguiled by the enthusiasm of letters, and by a keen sensibility to the beauties of nature; but soon his untoward disposition induces him to quarrel with his mountain hostess, and flying to London, his resources are exhausted, and rather than return to his guardian, he listlessly becomes a mere vagrant-the strolling companion of the most filthy and abandoned of the worst class of outcasts. We can relax our moral rigidity, and enter into the feelings of a proud, but misgoverned youth, who rather than be conquered by adversity, and submit to return to that discipline from which he had contemptuously fled, would prefer marshalling himself in the ranks, or resorting to the wretched support of his pen-but we can make no allowances for the disposition, which would prefer to even the mortification of a return to duty, a life of idleness and vagrancy amidst filth, vice, disease, and wretchedness. Genius and talents may sometimes shield, if not gild obliquity of conduct, but no genius can bestow upon such a course even the equivocal palliation of eccentricity. Dr. Johuson roved houseless about the streets of London with Savage, but they avoided vice, and solaced themselves by intellectual converse: when our Opium eater, however, tells us that he roved for nights through Oxford-street the friend, the companion, and lover of one of the very lowest class of the most abandoned, and when he tells us that her lips had no pollution in his eyes, we can apply to such a tale but terms of strong reproof. Having thus completed our moral criticism, we are bound, as intellectual critics, to bestow very high praise on the work. The author's description of the lonely child, the neg

lected orphan whom he found in care of a large untenanted house, in which himself was allowed by charity to repose, is touching to a degree of exquisite pain; it awakens the mind to reflection upon the countless evils to which so many are exposed in large cities the orphan stunted by want and misery-almost unknown to human association her face deformed by ceaseless woe-suffering from hunger, and a prey to cold-and left for months alone in this large and gloomy house, is a picture which must wring the heart-the heart at least of a parent it is a picture exquisitely drawn in the work before us the author has been so intent upon natural feeling, that he has never even thought of effect and hence the effect is doubly powerful. These observations may be applied with equal truth to his tale of Aun, the unchaste companion of his night rambles. The reader for a time forgets her vices in her woe-but reflection upon the realities of so vicious a life at length dissipates the sympathy, which the author so powerfully raises in her favour. The second part of the volume is a description of the author's motives for eating opium, the exhilirating effects it had upon the mental and corporeal system-the excess to which he carried this habit, the manner in which it at last vitiated the constitution-the difficulty of abandoning the vice, and the diseased vigour of fancy which it produced. All this is related in a manner which rivets the attention and interests the feelings exceedingly. The narrative or description is also accompanied by associations of thought, which evince power of intellect and the Confessions of an English Opium-eater may safely be pronounced a very entertaining duodecimo.

Stories after Nature. 12mo. pp. 251. 6s.

much pleasure, but we think the epis We have perused these stories with thet of" odd," is that which can be applied to them with the least chance of contradiction. Whether the term of odd be one of praise or of dispraise, or what degree of either it may convey, will very materially depend upon the dispositions and tastes of readers. For our parts, we are much inclined to like them for this qualification-for they lift the mind from scenes and thoughts of worldliness into fresher regions of chaste and simple fancy. We cannot agree with the author, that they are by any means stories after nature; on the contrary, they are stories after

what nature ought to be, or after the nature which a utopian mind can create, but resembling no state of manners, of feelings, or of action which have ever yet existed. The stories are destitute of any ingenious complexity of plot or arrangement, and void of any discrimination of character, or of interest in the circumstances and events, but they are conceived and told in a style so simple and so unsophisticated by worldly modifications of conduct or of motives, that the reader is ina world of a new creation, where he is at once delighted and invigorated by the novelty and freshness of every thing he witnesses. Each story has a good moral, and cause and effect are made to have an ethical relation to each other. On reading much at a 'time, however, the style has the unpleasant effect of mannerism, and the -author, in his effort to keep up the tone of original simplicity, frequently degenerates into inelegance, and sometimes into vulgarity. In an age so advanced in civilization, the character of all composition necessarily becomes polished, but at the same time tame and uniform, yet we have no doubt the public will appreciate these tales as

Isn't it Odd. By Marmaduke Merrywhistle. 3 vols. 12mo. pp. 847. 21s. London.

If Democritus be right, that laughter is the sovereign good of life, or even if old Montagne be sound in his opinion, that laughing is excellent policy, we must be bound to give Mr. Marmaduke Merry whistle's bust a niche in that part of the temple of fame allotted to the benefitters of mankind. Mr. Merrywhistle in these three volumes gives us his ancestry and parentage, and runs through his life, "e'en from his boyish days" up to that awful period which usually terminates a novel the marriage of the hero.

Mr. Merrywhistle possesses what may be called jocose wit, rather than wit itself, or that broader member of the same family, termed humour-and, in narrating his adventures, he diffuses his fertile vein of odd joke much to the amusement of the reader, and to the benefit of his own pretensions as a writer of this species of novel.

We are happy to find, that the Second Part of the Naval History of Great Britain, by Mr. James, will soon be published. It will be comprised in two thick Svo. volumes, with a 4to. volume of Annual Abstracts of the British Navy.Mr. James has obtained the most interesting materials from "The private correspondence of Napoleon with his Minister of Marine," which has thrown a new light upon the early transactions of the war of 1803, has betrayed the falsehood of many a gravely asserted fact, and has laid open to view such a system of fraud, practised upon the public by means of the press, not merely of the

French and Dutch press, but, unwit tingly, of the English press too, as must greatly detract from the credibility usually attached to documents of state.

Mr. William Davis is preparing fresh materials for a Second Journey round the Library of a Bibliomaniac, on the same plan was his former Journey Mr. D. would feel obliged by the contributions of really useful and curious information.[

A Treatise on Navigation and Nau tical Astronomy, adapted to practice, and to the purposes of elementary instruction. By Edward Riddle, Royal Naval Asylum, Greenwich:

A Second Number of the Liberal