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Slung from the spheres; gauzes of silver mist,
Looped up with cords of twisted wreathed light,
And tasselled round with weeping meteors!
These pendant lamps and chandeliers are bright
As earthly fires from dull dross can be cleansed;
Yet could my eyes drink up intenser beams
Undazzled-this is darkness; when I close
These lids, I see far fiercer brilliancies,

Skies full of splendid moons, and shooting stars,
And spouting exhalations, diamond fires,

And panting fountains quivering with deep glows.
Yes-this is dark-is it not dark?

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There should be three more here:

For two of them, they stay away perhaps,
Being gloomy minded, haters of fair revels-
They know their own thoughts best. As for the third,
Deep blue eyes-semi-shaded in white lids,
Finished with lashes fine for more soft shade,
Completed by her twin-arched ebon brows;
White temples of exactest elegance,
Of even mould, felicitous and smooth;
Cheeks fashioned tenderly on either side,
So perfect, so divine, that our poor eyes
Are dazzled with the sweet proportioning,
And wonder that 'tis so-
-the magic chance!
Her nostrils small, fragrant, fairy, delicate,
Her lips-I swear no human bones e'er wore
So taking a disguise."

the

Next in consideration to "Otho the Great," stands an attempt in the comic style, called "The Cap and Bells." The humour is of a very indifferent vein, depending chiefly upon introduction of slang, or extremely colloquial phrases, in immediate connexion with more serious expressions. There are, however, frequent touches of charming poetry; for example—

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"Good! good!' cried Hum, I have known her from a child! She is a changeling of my management;

She was born at midnight, in an Indian wild;

Her mother's screams with the striped tiger's blent,

While the torch-bearing slaves a halloo sent

Into the jungles; and her palanquin

Rested amid the desert's dreariment,

Shook with her agony, till fair were seen

The little Bertha's eyes ope on the stars serene.""

Of the two following stanzas, the first is as good an illustration of the mistakes of the poem as the second is of its beauties::

Sonnet on the Sea.

"Why, Hum, you're getting quite poetical;
Those nows you managed in a special style!'
'If ever you have leisure, sire, you shall

See scraps of mine will make it worth your while;
Tit-bits for Phoebus!-yes, you
well may smile.'

'Hark! hark! the bells-a little further yet
Good Hum, and let me view this mighty coil.'
Then the great emperor full graceful set

His elbow for a prop, and snuffed his mignonette.

"The morn is full of holiday; loud bells
With rival clamours ring from every spire;
Cunningly stationed music dies and swells
In echoing places, when the winds respire,
Light flags stream out like gauzy tongues of fire;
A metropolitan murmur, lifeful, warm,

Comes from the northern suburbs, rich attire
Freckles with red and gold the moving swarm;

95

While here and there clear trumpets blow a keen alarm."

Of the lesser poems "The Song of Four Fairies," and the fragment called "The Eve of St. Mark," deserve especial attention, but they are too long to quote. We must close our extracts with a grand and subtle sonnet

ON THE SEA.

"It keeps eternal whisperings around

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,

That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Oh, ye
who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea;
Oh, ye whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody,

Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!"

Ere we conclude, we must again entreat that we may not be misunderstood in what has been put forth by us concerning the short-comings of Keats in his character as a poet. Were we to speak at full all the praise which we believe his writings merit, we should satisfy the blindest of his admirers; but we have dwelt rather upon the faults of Keats, because while they have been very much less generally perceived than his excellencies, the perception of them is by no means of less importance to the

health of English literature. When we remember that poets are unconsciously received in the world as the highest authorities upon matters of feeling, and therefore of morals, we cannot think that we have dwelt even fully enough upon the deficiencies of the last phase which our poetry has assumed. We console ourselves with the assurance that it is a phase which cannot be an enduring one. Poetry in England has passed through three great epochs, and is now in the early youth of the fourth, and let us hope the noblest. Natural and religious, almost by compulsion, nearly till the time of Milton, the muse at last endeavoured to be something other and more than these; with Cowley and his train, she affected elaborate, artificial, and meretricious ornament; but the re-action appeared in that school of sensible poets, of which Dryden and Pope were the chief doctors; we are now returning to the right path; nothing can be more laudable than have been the aims of most of our modern poets, and we found our extraordinary hopes of the final success of the school, less upon any earnest we have received of the harvest than upon the incontrovertible truth that "whatsoever we desire in youth, in age we shall plentifully obtain."

It remains for us to assure our readers that Mr. Milnes, whose prose style is the completest, in its happy way, that we are acquainted with, has executed his task with accomplished taste. For a poet to have conducted the autobiography of a brother poet, as Mr. Milnes has done, without having once overstepped the modest office of an "editor," is an exhibition of self-denial which is now as rare as it is worthy of imitation.

Mr. Britton's Authorship of Junius Elucidated. 97

ART. IV.-1. The Authorship of the Letters of Junius Elucidated, including a Biographical Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Barré, M.P. By JOHN BRITTON, F.S.A. London: 1848. 2. Junius, including Letters by the same writer under other signatures, (now first collected,) to which are added his confidential Correspondence with Mr. Wilkes, and his Private Letters addressed to Mr. H. S. Woodfall, with a Preliminary Essay, Notes, Facsimiles, &c. in 3 vols. London: 1812.

3. Identity of Junius with a Distinguished Living Character (Sir Philip Francis) established. London: 1816.

4. Letters to a Nobleman, proving a late Prime Minister (the Duke of Portland) to have been Junius, and developing the secret motives which induced him to write under that and other signatures, with an Appendix containing a celebrated case published by Almon in 1768. London: 1816.

5. The Author of Junius (Hugh Boyd) ascertained from a concatenation of circumstances amounting to Moral Demonstration. By GEORGE CHALMERS, F.R.SS.A. London: 1817.

6. The Author of Junius discovered in the person of the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield. London: 1821.

7. A Critical Enquiry regarding the Real Author of the Letters of Junius, proving them to have been written by Lord Viscount Sackville. By GEORGE COVENTRY. London: 1825. 8. Junius Lord Chatham, and the Miscellaneous Letters proved to be Spurious. By JOHN SWINDEN. London: 1833. 9. History of Party. By WINGROVE COOKE, Esq., vol. iii. Chap. vi. London: 1837. In this Chapter the claims of Colonel Lachlan Macleane are briefly stated, from a Communication made by Sir DAVID BREWSTER to the Author.

10. Junius. A Letter to an Honourable Brigadier-General, Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's Forces in Canada. London: 1760. Now first ascribed to Junius; to which is added, a Refutation of the Letter, &c. by an Officer, with Incidental Notices of Lords Townshend and Sackville, and others. Edited by N. W. SIMONS of the British Museum. London: 1841. 11. The History of Junius and his Works, and a Review of the Controversy respecting the Identity of Junius, with an Appendix containing Portraits and Sketches. By JOHN JAQUES. London 1843. Pp. 406.

:

STAT NOMINIS UMBRA* must still intellectual mausoleum of Junius.

be the inscription upon the Eighty suns have revolved

*The shadow of his name survives.

VOL. X. NO. XIX.

G

since this political Meteor burst upon our horizon. Under the censure of Junius the Sovereign trembled on his throne;-the corrupt statesman crouched beneath his rod ;-the pliant judge smarted under his rebuke;—the fawning courtier writhed under the agony of his lash ;—and the Lords and Commons of England were at once the sport of his wit, and the victims of his wrath. Regarding as inseparable the private character and the political acts of public men, and viewing the immorality of the Court as the fountain of social corruption, he dragged into public view the licentiousness of public men, and thus subjected himself to the imputation of writing under the excitement of personal feeling, and of assuming the mask of a political moralist, in order to aim a shaft at the heart of an enemy, or strike a blow at the character of a friend.

It is easy to understand how Junius has been charged with "falsehood and malice" by those whose private character he unveiled, or who were stung with the sharpness of his wit, or smarted under the asperity of his satire; but these charges have never been substantiated; and when we study the disclosures which time is continually drawing forth from the epistolary stores of the past, we have no hesitation in hazarding the opinion, that Junius may yet be proved to have neither magnified the corruptions of the Government which he denounced, nor malignantly calumniated the officials who composed it.

It may be, and has been, a question how far, in the discussion of public measures, we are entitled to pry into the character, and emblazon the vices of public men. In seasons of national emergency, the State may require for its service the talent and practical wisdom of men who may not be distinguished for their religious or moral qualities; but in the settled and normal condition of a Christian land, where the rights of the reigning family rest upon a religious qualification, and where adhesion to a Creed is demanded from the functionaries of the State, it would be an insult to the feelings and to the faith of a nation, to place either a sceptic or a profligate in power; and were such a character entrusted with high and responsible functions, we should hold it to be a public duty to expose his profanity, or his licentiousness. There are infirmities, however, there are even vices, which shrink from the public gaze, and which neither invite our imitation nor demand our rebuke. Charity throws her veil over insulated immoralities, into which great and good men may be occasionally betrayed, and which accident or malignity may have placed before the public eye. When remorse or shame pursue the offender, public censure may well be spared. Vice has no attractive phase, when the culprit is seen in sackcloth or in tears. But when licentiousness casts its glare from a throne,

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