the wrench as severe as that needed "To drag the magnet from the pole, But Amador, after ten years' absence -so Christabel was no girl-now returned" with name and fame and fortune"-for "The Lion-King, with his own right hand, Poor Christabel was lean and white, Fairer and brighter, as he gazes From those glorious eyes, That in the other lies!" This is rather sudden, and takes the reader aback-for though poor Christabel had had a strange night of it, she was a lovely creature the day before, and could not have grown so very "lean and white" in so short a time. Only think of her looking "peevish"! But "A trampling of hoofs at the cullice-port, moor, A mingled numerous array, With foam and mud bespattered o'er, And now that day is dropping late, Have passed the drawbridge and the gate." Here again Mr Tupper shows, somewhat ludicrously, his unacquaintance with the Lake-Land, and makes Sir Roland perform a most circuitous journey. You know that Sir Leoline and Sir Roland had been friends in youth, and cannot have forgotten Coleridge's exquisite description of their quarrel and estrangement. He would have painted their reconciliation in a few lines of light. But attend to Tupper-and remember the parties are, each of them, bordering, by his account, on fourscore. Like aspens tall beside the brook, 'Tis fifty years ago to-day With words of insult high; The haply scornful other? "Their knees give way, their faces are pale, stronger Till they can refrain no longer, "Then, the full luxury of grief "Her beauty hath conquer'd: a sunny smile Our Lady of Furness?-the same, the same! O holy one, we know thee now, "Wonder-stricken were they then, To young Susanna's fairness knelt Their bosoms cold." They walk off as jealous as March hares, and Amador, a more fitting wooer, supplies their place. His head is cushioned on her breast, "Stung with remorse, Hath drop't at her feet as a clay-cold corse;" she raises him up and kisses him-Geraldine, with "an involuntary hiss and snake-like stare," gnashes her teeth on the loving pair. Bard Bracy plays on his triple-stringed Welsh harp a holy hymn-Geraldine is convulsed, grows lank and lean— "The spell is dead-the charm is o'er, seen no more." Next day at noon Amador and Christabel are wed-the spirit of the bride's mother descending from heaven to bless the nuptials-the bridegroom is declared by her to be Sir Rowland's son "The spirit said, and all in light Melted away that vision bright; My tale is told." Such is Geraldine, a Sequel to Coleridge's Christabel! It is, indeed, a most shocking likeness-call it rather a horrid caricature. Coleridge's Christabel, in any circumstances beneath the sun, moon, and stars, “lean and white, and peevish"!!-a most impious libel. Coleridge's Geraldine "like a lady from a far countree❞— with that dreadful bosom and sidestain still the most beautiful of all the witches-and in her mysterious wickedness powerful by the inscrutable best of human innocence the dragonsecret of some demon-spell over the daughter of an old red-raged hag, hobbling on wooden crutches! Where is our own? Coleridge's bold English Barons, stiff in their green eld as oaks, Sir Leoline and Sir Roland, with rheumy eyes, slavering lips, and tottering knees, shamelessly wooing the same witch in each others presence, with all the impotence of the last stage of dotage! "She had dreams all yesternight Of her own betrothed knight; And she in the midnight wood will pray For the weal of her lover that's far away!" That is all we hear of him from Coleridge-Mr Tupper brings before us the "handsome youth" (yes! he calls him so), with "a goodly shield, Three wild-boars or, on an azure field, While scallop-shells on an argent fess Proclaim him a pilgrim and knight no less!! Enchased in gold on his helmet of steel A deer-hound stands on the high-plumed keel!" &c. And thus equipped-booted and spurred-armed cap-a-pie-he leaps the moat-contrary to all the courtesies of chivalry-and, rushing up to the lady, who had been praying for him for ten years (ten is too many), he turns on his heel as if he had stumbled by mistake on an elderly vinegar-visaged chambermaid, and makes furious love before her face to the lady on whose arm she is fainting;-and this is in the spirit of Coleridge! It won't do to say Amador is under a spell. No such spell can be tolerated-and so far from being moved with pity for Amador as infatuated, we feel assured, that there is not one Quaker in Ken dal, who, on witnessing such brutality, would not lend a foot to kick him down stairs, and a hand to fling him into the moat among the barbels. As for the diction, it is equally destitute of grace and power-and not only without any colouring of beauty, but all blotch and varnish, laid on as with a shoe-brush. All sorts of images and figures of speech crawl over the surface of the Sequel, each shifting for itself, like certain animalculæ set a-racing on a hot-plate by a flaxen-headed cowboy; and though there are some hundreds of them, not one is the property of Mr Tupper, but liable to be claimed by every versifier from Cockaigne to Cape Wrath. Let us turn, then, to his ambitious and elaborate address to Imagination, and see if it conspicuously exhibit the qualities of the poetical character. "Thou fair enchantress of my willing heart, Or quaking sands of untried theory, That wind a dubious pathway through the deep,- Have I not often sat with thee retired, Alone yet not alone, though grave most glad, As from the distant hum of many waters, Imagination is here hailed first as a "fair enchantress," then as a "lovely siren," and then as the poet's mother "I am thine own child." In the next paragraph-not quoted-she is called "angelic visitant;' again he says, me thy son;" immediately after, "indulgent lover, I am all thine own;" and then 66 Imagination, art thou not my friend, As the coy village maiden's " rather ridiculous with Imagination sitting by his side, and whispering soft nothings into his ear. "With still small voice" is too hal- Or quaking sands of untried theory, We do not believe that these lines have "The intellectual power through words Imagination is then "Triumphant "Because thy secret heart, Like that strange light, burning yet unconsumed, Is all on flame, a censer filled with odours, Suggesting passive terrors and delights, Here the heart of Imagination is-if we rightly understand it—the burning bush spoken of in the Old Testament -a censer filled with odours-and a slumbering volcano ! That is not poetry. But here comes to us an astounding personification-which we leave, without criticism, to be admired if you choose. "Thy dark cheek, Warm and transparent, by its half-formed dimple The coral groves: thy broad and sunny brow, The Muses, and the Passions, and Young Love, Centaurs, and shapes uncouth, and wild coneeits: Illumining the classic portico That leads to the high dome where Learning sits: Flame-coloured pinions, streaked with gold and blue, So have I sped with thee, my bright-eyed love, Bounding from thought to thought, unmindful of We call that bad. Like a chamois-like a whirlwind-like Ganymede! Shew us a flight-without telling us what it is like-and leave us to judge for ourselves whether or no you are a poet and can fly. Does Imagination inspire" The Song of an Alpine Elf ?" The Alpine Elf sings "My summer's home is the cataract's foam, As it floats in a frothing heap; My winter's rest is the weasel's nest, Or deep with the mole I sleep." We daresay there are moles and weasels among the Alps, but one does not think of them there; and had Mr Tupper ever taken up a weasel by the tail, between his finger and thumb, he would not, we are persuaded, have conceived it possible that any Elf, accustomed to live during summer in the froth of a cataract, could have been so far left to himself" as to have sought winter lodgings with an animal of such an intolerable stink. And what are the Alpine Elf's pursuits? "I ride for a freak on the lightning streak, And mingle among the cloud, My swarthy form with the thunder-storm, Wrapp'd in its sable shroud." A very small thunder storm indeed would suffice to wrap his Elf-ship in its sable shroud; but is he not too magniloquent for a chum of the mole and the weasel? What would be the astonishment of the mole to see his bed-fellow as follows "Often I launch the huge avalanche, And make it my milk-white sledge, When unappalled to the Grindle wald I slide from the Shrikehorn's edge." By his own account he cannot be much more than a span long-and we are sceptical as to his ability to launch an avalanche, though we are aware that avalanches hold their places by a precarious tenure. However, the sight of so minute a gentleman sliding unappalled on a huge avalanche from the Grindlewald to the Shrikeborn's edge, would be of itself worth a journey to Switzerland. But what a cruel little wretch it is! not satisfied with pushing the ibex over the precipice, he does not scruple to avow, "That my greatest joy is to lure and decoy Ha! he couldn't leap like me; the chasm? 'Twould be far better sport, one would think, to an Alpine elf, to precipitate the young bridegroom. "Ha! he couldn't leap like insult-and how natural! me," is a fine touch of egotism and "And there mid his bones, that echoed with groans, I make me a nest of his hair; The ribs dry and white rattle loud as in spite, When I rock in my cradle there: For I'm all alone in my palace of bone, That's tapestried fair with the old man's hair, And dappled with clots of blood." At what season of the year? During summer his home is in a "frothing heat;" during winter he sleeps with the weasel or moudy-warp. It must be in spring or autumn that he makes his nest in a dead man's hair. How imaginative ! Turn we now to a reality, and see how Mr Tupper, who likened himself |