dal, who, on witnessing such brutality, shifting for itself, like certain animalwould not lend a foot to kick him down culæ set a-racing on a hot-plate by a stairs, and a hand to fling him into flaxen-headed cowboy; and though the moat among the barbels.

there are some hundreds of them, not As for the diction, it is equally des- one is the property of Mr Tupper, but titute of grace and power-and not liable to be claimed by every versifier only without any colouring of beauty, from Cockaigne to Cape Wrath. but all blotch and varnish, laid on Let us turn, then, to his ambitious as with a shoe-brush. All sorts of and elaborate address to Imagination, images and figures of speech crawl and see if it conspicuously exhibit the over the surface of the Sequel, each qualities of the poetical character.

“ Thou fair enchantress of my willing heart,
Who charmest it to deep and dreamy slumber,
Gilding mine evening clouds of reverie,

Thou lovely Siren, who, with still small voice
Most softly musical, dost lure me on
O'er the wide sea of indistinct idea,
Or quaking sands of untried theory,
Or ridgy shoals of fixt experiment
That wind a dubious pathway through the deep,-
Imagination, I am thine own child:
Have I not often sat with thee retired,
Alone yet not alone, though grave most glad,
All silent outwardly, but loud within,
As from the distant hum of many waters,
Weaving the tissue of some delicate thought,
And hushing every breath that might have rent
Our web of gossamer, so finely spun ?
Have I not often listed thy sweet song,
(While in vague echoes and Æolian notes
The chambers of my heart have answered it),
With eye as bright in joy, and fluttering pulse,
As the coy village maiden's, when her lover
Whispers his hope to her delighted ear?"

Imagination is here hailed first as a 6 With still small voice" is too hal“ fair enchantress,” then as a “ lovely lowed an expression to be properly siren," and then as the poet's mother applied to a lovely siren;" nor is it

-“ I am thine own child.” In the the part of a siren to lure poets on next paragraph—not quoted-she is “ O'er the wide sea of indistinct idea, called "angelic visitant ;” again he Or quaking sands of untried theory, says, “ me thy son;" immediately af. Or ridgy shoals of fixt experiment, ter, “indulgent lover, I am all thine That wind a dubious pathway through the own;" and then

deep." “ Imagination, art thou not my friend, We do not believe that these lines have In crowds and solitude, my comrade dear, any real meaning; and then they were Brother and sister, mine own other self, manifestly suggested by two mighty The Hector to my soul's Andromache ?” ones of WordsworthThese last lines are prodigious non- " The intellectual power through words sense; and we could not have believed and things it possible so to burlesque the most Went sounding on its dim and perilous touching passage in all Homer. Nor w ay.” can we help thinking the image of Imagination is then « Triumphant Martin Farquhar Tupper, Esq., M.A., Beauty, bright Intelligence," and author of “ Proverbial Philosophy"- " The chastened fire of extacy suppressed With eye as bright in joy, and fluttering Beams from her eye,” pulse,

which is all true; but why thus beams As the coy village maiden's "_

her eye? rather ridiculous—with Imagination

" Because thy secret heart, sitting by his side, and whispering soft Like that strange light, burning yet unconnothings into his ear.

sumed,

Is all on flame, a censer filled with odours, bush spoken of in the Old Testament And to my mind, who feel thy fearful -a censer filled with odours—and a power,

slumbering volcano ! That is not Suggesting passive terrors and delights, poetry. But here comes to us an as. A slumbering volcano,” &c.

tounding personification which we Here the heart of Imagination is--if leave, without criticism, to be admired we rightly understand it--the burning if you choose.

“ Thy dark cheek,
Warm and transparent, by its half-formed dimple
Reveals an under-world of wondrous things
Ripe in their richness,—as among the bays
Of blest Bermuda, through the sapphire deep,
Ruddy and white, fantastically branch
The coral groves : thy broad and sunny brow,
Made fertile by the genial smile of heaven,
Shoots up an hundred fold the glorious crop
Of arabesque ideas ; forth from thy curls
Half hidden in their black luxuriance
The twining sister-graces lightly spring,
The Muses, and the Passions, and Young Love,
Tritons and Naiads, Pegasus, and Sphinx,
Atlas, Briareus, Phæton, and Cyclops,
Centaurs, and shapes uncouth, and wild coneeits :
And in the midst blazes the star of mind,
Illumining the classic portico
That leads to the high dome where Learning sits :
On either side of that broad sunny brow
Flame-coloured pinions, streaked with gold and blue,
Burst from the teeming brain; while under them
The forked lightning, and the eloud-robed thunder,
And fearful shadows, and unhallowed eyes,
And strange foreboding forms of terrible things
Lurk in the midnight of thy raven locks.”

Here and there we meet with a Screened from the north by groves of rather goodish line-as for example- rooted thoughts.”

" Thou hast wreathed me smiles, You admire it ?-- then probably you And hung them on a statue's marble lips,"

will admire this tooAnd again “ Hast made earth's dullest pebbles bright " So, too, the memory of departed joy, like gems.”

Walking in black with sprinkled tears of And still better, perhaps

pearl,

Passes before the mind with look less “ Hast lengthened out my nights with life

stern, long dreams.”

And foot more lightened, when thine inWe are willing, but scarcely able, ward power, to be pleased with the following image: Most gentle friend, upon the clouded face “ First feelings, and young hopes, and

nd young hones, and Sheds the fair light of better joy to come, better aims,

And throws round Grief the azure scarf of

Hope.”
And sensibilities of delicate sort,
Like timorous mimosas, which the breath,

How far better had that thought
The cold and cautious breath of daily life,
Hath not, as yet, had power to blight or been, if expressed in simplest lan-
kill,

guage, and without any figure at all! From my heart's garden ; for they stood The Invocation ends thus,

retired,

“ As the wild chamois bounds from rock to rock,
Oft on the granite steeples nicely poised,
Unconscious that the cliff from which he hangs
Was once a fiery sea of molten stone,
Shot up ten thousand feet and crystallized
When earth was labouring with her kraken brood ;

So have I sped with thee, my bright-eyed love,
Imagination, over pathless wilds,
Bounding from thought to thought, unmindful of
The fever of my soul that shot them up
And made a ready footing for my speed,
As like the whirlwind I have flown along
Winged with ecstatic mind, and carried away,
Like Ganymede of old, o'er cloudcapt Ida,
Or Alps, or Andes, or the ice-bound shores
Of Arctic or Antarctic-stolen from earth
Her sister-planets and the twinkling eyes
That watch her from afar, to the pure seat
Of rarest Matter's last created world,
And brilliant halls of self-existing Light.”

We call that bad. Like a cha- an avalanche, though we are aware mois - like a whirlwind_like Gany- that avalanches hold their places by mede! Shew us a flight-without a precarious tenure. However, the telling us what it is like and leave sight of so minute a gentleman sliding us to judge for ourselves whether or unappalled on a huge avalanche from no you are a poet and can fly.

the Grindlewald to the Shrikeborn's Does Imagination inspire « The edge, would be of itself worth a jourSong of an Alpine Elf ?" The Alpine ney to Switzerland. But what a cruel Elf sings

Jittle wretch it is! not satisfied with “ My summer's home is the cataract's

pushing the ibex over the precipice, foam,

he does not scruple to avow, As it floats in a frothing heap ;

" That my greatest joy is to lure and decoy My winter's rest is the weasel's nest, To the chasm's slippery brink, Or deep with the mole I sleep.”

The hunter bold, when he's weary and old,

And there let him suddenly sink We daresay there are moles and wea.

A thousand feet-dead !he dropped like sels among the Alps, but one does

lead, not think of them there ; and had Mr

Ha ! he couldn't leap like me ; Tupper ever taken up a weasel by With broken back, as a felon on the rack, the tail, between his finger and thumb, He hangs on a split pine tree.” he would not, we are persuaded, have

Why shove only the old hunter over conceived it possible that any Elf, ac- the chasm? Twould be far better customed to live during summer in

sport, one would think, to an Alpine the froth of a cataract, could have to

elf, to precipitate the young bridebeen « so far left to himself” as to

groom. * Ha! he couldn't leap like have sought winter lodgings with an

me," is a fine touch of cgotism and animal of such an intolerable stink.

insult-and how natural ! And what are the Alpine Elf's pursuits ?

“ And there mid his bones, that echoed

with groans, “ I ride for a freak on the lightning streak,

I make me a nest of his hair ; And mingle among the cloud,

The ribs dry and white rattle loud as in My swarthy form with the thunder-storm,

spite, Wrapp'd in its sable shroud."

When I rock in my cradle there : A very small thunder storm indeed Hurrah, hurrah, and ha, ba, ha! would suffice to wrap his Elf-ship in

I'm in a merry mood, its sable shroud ; but is he not too

For I'm all alone in my palace of bone, magniloquent for a chum of the mole

That's tapestried fair with the old man's and the weasel ? What would be the

hair, astonishment of the mole to see his

And dappled with clots of blood.” bed-fellow as follows

At what season of the year? Du

ring summer his home is in a “froth“Often I launch the huge avalanche,

ing heat ;” during winter he sleeps And make it my milk-white sledge,

with the weasel or moudy-warp. It When unappalled to the Grindlewald I slide from the Shrikehorn's edge."

must be in spring or autumn that he

makes his nest in a dead man's hair. By his own account he cannot be How imaginative! much more than a span long—and we Turn we now to a reality, ar! are sceptical as to his ability to launch how Mr Tupper, who liker

to a chamois, deals with a chamois. “ He thought what fear it were to fall hunter. He describes one scaling Into the pit that swallows all, « Catton's battlement” before the peep

Unwing'd with hope and love ; of day, and now at its summit.

And when the succour came at last,

O then he learnt how firm and fast “ Over the top, as he knew well,

Was his best Friend above."
Beyond the glacier in the dell
A herd of chamois slept;

That is much better than any thing So down the other dreary side,

yet quoted, and cannot be read withWith cautious step, or careless slide •

out a certain painful interest. But He bounded, or he crept.”

the composition is very poor. “ And now he scans the chasmed ice ;

“ O heaven! He stoops to leap, and in a trice

He hath leapt in !”. His foot hath slipp'd, -O heaven !

Well—what then ? " and down he He hath leapt in, and down he falls falls !" Indeed! We do not object to Between those blue tremendous walls, “ between those blue tremendous Standing asunder riven.

walls," but why tell us they were

“ standing asunder riven?" We knew “ But quick his clutching nervous grasp he had been on the edge of the Contrives a jutting crag to clasp,

“ chasmed ice." “ O moment of ex. And thus he hangs in air ;

ulting bliss !” No-10—no. “ Many O moment of exulting bliss !

a rood”-perpendicular altitude . is Yet hope so nearly hopeless is

never measured by roods nor yet by Twin-brother to despair.

perches. Satan “ lay floating many a

rood"--but no mention of roods wben “ He look'd beneath,-a horrible doom!

- his stature reached the sky." “ His Some thousand yards of deepening gloom,

head grows dizzy"-aye that it did

hodou Where he must drop to die!

long before the fifteen hours had exHe look'd above, and many a rood Upright the frozen ramparts stood

pired. “ But stop, Ostop” is, we

fear, laughable-yet we do not laugh Around a speck of sky.

—for 'tis no laughing matter-and “ Fifteen long dreadful hours he hung,

“ never in life give up your hope" is And often by strong breezes swung

at so very particular a juncture too His fainting body twists,

general an injunction. « Be cool, Scarce can he cling one moment more,

man, hold on fast" is a leetle too much, His half-dead hands are ice, and sore

addressed to poor Pierre, whose“ half His burning bursting wrists.

dead hands were ice," and who had

been hanging on by them for fifteen “ His head grows dizzy,-he must drop,

hours. He half resolves,—but stop, O stop, “ And so from out that terrible place, Hold on to the last spasm,

With death's pole paint upon his face, Never in life give up your hope,

They drew him up at last”Behold, behold a friendly rope

is either very good or very bad-and Is dropping down the chasm!

we refer it to Wordsworth. The con“ They call thee, Pierre,-see, see them

cluding stanzas are tame in the exhere,

treme;
Thy gathered neighbours far and near, “ For many harrowing terrors ran
Be cool, man, hold on fast :

Through his poor heart that day !"
And so from out that terrible place,
With death's pale paint upon his face

We can easily believe it; but never They drew him up at last.

after such a rescue was there so feeble

an expression from poet's heart of re“ And he came home an altered man,

ligious gratitude in the soul of a sinFor many harrowing terrors ran

ner saved. Through his poor heart that day ;

The “ African Desert" and " The He thought how all through life, though Suttees" look like Oxford Unprized • young,

Poems. The Caravan, after suffering Upon a thread, a hair, he hung,

the deceit of the mirage, a-dust are Over a gulf midway:

aware of a well.

“ Hope smiles again, as with instinctive haste.
The panting camels rush along the waste,

And snuff the grateful breeze, that sweeping by
Wafts its cool fragrance through the cloudless sky.
Swift as the steed that feels the slacken'd rein
And fies impetuous o'er the sounding plain,
Eager as, bursting from an Alpine source,
The winter torrent in its headlong course,
Still hasting on, the wearied band behold

The green oase, an emerald couch'd in gold!
And now the curving rivulet they descry,
That bow of hope upon a stormy sky,
Now ranging its luxuriant banks of green
In silent rapture gaze upon the scene :
His graceful arms the palm was waving there
Caught in the tall acacia's tangled hair,
While in festoons across his branches slung
The gay kossom its scarlet tassels hung;
The flowering colocynth had studded round
Jewels of promise o'er the joyful ground,
And where the smile of day burst on the stream,
The trembling waters glitter'd in the beam."

There is no thirst here our palate could much mend it; but some of the grows not dry as we read. What most agreeable men we know labour passion is there in saying that the under it, and we suspect owe to it no camels rushed along the waste, inconsiderable part of their power in “ Swift as the steed that feels the slack, conversation. People listen to their ened rein,"

impeded prosing more courteously, And fies impetuous o'er the sounding and more attentively, than to the prate plain ?"

of those "whose sweet course is not “ Not a bit.” And still worse is

hindered;" and thus encouraged, they “ Eager as bursting from an Alpine source

grow more and more loquacious in their

vivacity, till they fairly take the lead The winter torrent in its headlong course ;" in argument or anecdote, and are the for there should have been no allusion delight and instruction of the evening, to water any where else but there; as it may hap, in literature, philoso. the groan and the cry was for water to phy, or politics. Then, a scandalous drink ; and had Mr Tupper felt for the story, stuttered or stammered, is irrecaravan, men and beasts, no other sistible-every point tells—and blunt water would he have seen in his ima- indeed, as the head of a pin, must be gination—it would have been impos- that repartee that extricates not itself sible for him to have thought of liken with a jerk from the tongue-tied, sharp ing the cavalcade to Alpine sources as the point of a needle. and winter torrents_he would have We beg to assure Mr Tupper, that huddled it all headlong, prone, or on his sympathy with the “ Stammerer," its hands, hoofs, and knees, into the would extort from the lips of the water of salvation. « The green oase, most swave of that fortunate class, an emerald couched in goldis" Water! who, it must be allowed, are occasionWater! Water! and there it is! ally rather irritable, characteristic ex. “ That bow of hope upon a stormy sky!!!"

pressions of contempt; and that so far

from thinking their peculiarity any They are on its banks—and

impediment, except merely in speech, “ In silent rapture gaze upon the scene !!!"

1 they pride themselves, as well as they

may, from experience, on the advantage And then he absolutely paints it! it gives them in a colloquy, over the not in water colours—but in chalks. glib. If to carry its point at last be Graceful arms of palms-tangled hair the end of eloquence, they are not only of acacia-scarlet tassels of kossoms in the most eloquent, but the only elo. festoons-and the jewels of promise of quent of men. No stammerer was ever the flowering colocynth!!!

beaten in argument - his opponents Stammering or stuttering, certainly always are glad to give in--and often, is an unpleasant defect-or weakness after they have given in, and suppose in the power of articulation or speech, their submission has been accepted, and we don't believe that Dr Browster they find the contrary of all that from a VOL. XLIY, NO. CCLXXYIII.

31