Beattie's Edwin could not have been more alone. He was, indeed, what Pollok was not a solitary child'-a youth that mused among the hills,'feeding his imagination apart from his fellow-men.' The writer appears to be kindled by this mistake in poetical breeding,' into a display of easy writing,' which, to say the truth, is what Aristophanes calls prose on horseback; Anglice, stilted. It will not bear a rough analysis. Readers and writers are not on fair terms when the latter

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Write with ease to show their breeding;

For easy writing's d―d hard reading.

The drift of this display, stripped of its May-day finery, is, that it is quite out of nature for young men to succeed in treating of religious themes of such difficulty and sublime devotion. Angels who soar so high • veil their heads;' and, therefore, authors who attempt such forbidden flights are guilty of what, gentle reader? of presumptuously using the waxen pinions of the ambitious Icarus? or the failing Pegasean wing of the equally ambitious Bellerophon? No! powers of critical bathos! guilty of a claptrap!'

From this curiosa felicitas the critic hurries with breathless haste to contradict the tenor of the preceding passage and himself. He now argues that such subjects are so temptingly easy, (the splendour of biblical themes and their inherent poetry helping out the poetical defects of the bardlings), that it has recently become fashionable, among persons of

pretty fair abilities, to turn it to account,' and to trust to obtaining a borrowed lustre, not from their own merits, but the sublime sacredness of their themes.

A writer thus at war with himself may be safely left to fight out the battle. Mr. Montgomery may say of him, as Cicero said of Anthony, Homo disertus non tantum mecum quam secum ipse tota oratione pugnabat.'

Dr. Johnson's opinion is, that it is very difficult to write successfully on biblical or sacred themes, for the very reason that the critic before us thinks it very easy; viz. that such themes can only be new versions of what has been said before to better purpose.' So much the greater merit in Mr. Montgomery to conquer this inherent difficulty! So much the more vivida vis in the creative energy of the poetic genius which can electrify non-conductors-subdue the resisting stubbornness of incoalescing materials, and fuse and mould them into shapes, imparting pleasure, extorting sympathy, and kindling admiration!

The critic next, from inflation and contradiction, proceeds in good earnest to critical business, and, like his compeer, appears to plume himself on striking a deadly blow, by putting some of Mr. Robert Montgo

* Johnson, speaking of the noblest of Young's sacred poems, says, that the great reason why the reader is disappointed, is, that the thought of the Last Day makes every man more than poetical, by spreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred horror, that oppresses distinction and disdains expression.' He draws a similar inference as to difficulty in such subjects, in his critique on Cowley's translation of the Psalms, and on his Davideis.'

mery's blank verse into a prose form. Little need be added on this head. The quoted passage, in this instance, concerns Napoleon; and, though far from being one of the most striking passages in the book, is picturesque and clever moreover, in the portion dully or consciously left out by the critic, forcible and exciting. The denunciation of Napoleon's apostacy from liberty, as arresting the destinies of the world, and providing future reactions by the agony which it left on godlike spirits

An agony too deep for words

To fathom: too sublime for slaves to feel

is not strictly new; but it impinges on a leading sensitive nerve in the present mechanism of social mind, and displays the instinctive tact, the thoughtful depth and long-foreseeing sagacity of genius.

Only one column is now left by the Literary Journalist for real criticism, namely, objections as to character, sentiment, and diction. I have taken the liberty of thus classing these objections according to critical form (as in the case of Fraser's Magazine), by picking them out of the chaotic heap of personal rubbish in which they are imbedded. The character of the fallen Archangel, as conceived by Mr. Montgomery, has been stated. He defines it himself in his poetical preface*. It is his own, and a new creation. Whether, as I and others think, that creation be dis

* See the three stanzas, Satan, page 11, beginning "Such a wanderer o'er the earth.' See also the passage, Satan, 1st Book, p. 99, * Even I,' &c.; Oh vengeance,' Book ii. p. 134, and many others.

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tinguished by elaborate metaphysical inference or not, he had full poetical licence to construct and control the offspring of his own mind. There are only certain questions left for the critic. Are the ends proportioned to the means? Are the sentiment and action true to the conceived character? Is the character consistent with itself:

In

every work regard the writer's end,

Since none. can compass more than they intend;
And if the means be just, the conduct true,

Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.-POPE.

The Edinburgh Literary Journalist, mistaking or misstating the character of Mr. Montgomery's Satan, and erecting another Satanic character as his guide, chooses that his Paracelsian* phantom should, gratuitously, and despite of Satan's serpent wisdom, lie to himself; and he asserts that it shows great want of discrimination and judgment,' to make Satan confessing ⚫ that he is challenged to admire a man of virtue,' and admitting to himself—that which he must know to the multiplication of his own pangs, that his REAL adVERSARIES are not often perceived by the world-that

The obscure on Earth are oft the fam'd in Heaven.

Has the objector forgot that the devils believe,' and that Milton's Satan admits that he admires, though he cannot imitate † virtue? All this cavilling

* The Alchemist Paracelsus left a recipe for manufacturing a living being.

† Paradise Regained, (setting aside Satan's "tears" of bitter regret,

is a mistake resulting from a false appreciation of 'Satan's' character, the pathos, remorse, and self-punishment of which can only be fully developed by making him vividly susceptible to that beauty from which he is divorced, and discriminatingly just in his estimate of that virtue from which he has fallen *. A

"such as Angels weep," in Paradise Lost), ascribes these sentiments to Satan

Though I have lost

Much lustre of my native brightness, lost

To be beloved of God, I have not lost

To love, at least contemplate and admire

What I see excellent in good or fair, or virtuous.

In fact, Milton represents even the subordinate angels as not intellectually fallen, though morally degraded-a grand philosophical hypothesis. The fallen angels, in the following passage, would seem prophetically to represent the present age of ambitious, inquiring discovery, philosophical speculation, puzzling idealism, mental excitement and refinement, and moral deterioration; their poetry and music are still beautiful.

Others more mild

Retreated in a silent valley, sung

Of themes angelical to many a harp, &c. &c.

See Paradise Lost, 2nd Book.

* Shakspeare's view is equally philosophical.

Ah no! the apprehension of the good

Gives but the deeper feeling to the worse.

So is that of Rogers in his Columbus, who thus describes the appearance of the Evil Spirits :

Forms of angelic mould and grace divine ;

Yet of their glory many a scatter'd ray

Shot thro' the gathering shadows of decay;

Each moved a god.

And he says of their feelings, with theoretic truth and poetic pathos:

All exiled the realms of rest,

In vain the sadness of their souls suppress'd.