sion. In short, we find scarce any of the poetic essentials in this work; the versification is flat and monotonous; nor does the long and heavy composition contain, in my opinion, twenty lines which deserve to be called poetry. Many passages are obscure through grammatic inaccuracy.

The duty enjoined by this poem is, without doubt, important, and, in the higher classes of life, infamously sacrificed to unjustifiable excuses; -but, by ridiculous exaggeration of the evils resulting from its neglect, the poet disarms the force of his own admonitions. The unnatural practice of omitting it through idleness, the love of amusement, or personal vanity, is sufficiently reprehensible, without calling in the aid of bugbear. The injunctions to perform it are, in this composition, positive, without making any exceptions from circumstances which render a large number of mothers unfit for this delightful office, as insanity or scrofula in their families, or a pulmonary or scorbutic taint in their own constitution. Also, with no more exceptions, it pronounces the hired wet-nurse an inevitable fiend, whether in or out of the house of her employer; and absurdly asserts that, not only bodily diseases are imbibed by the infant from her, but every grovelling and vicious propensity, as if ignorance and wickedness could be conveyed by aliment.

VOL. V.

Where the maternal nutriment is ineligible, no mention is made of cow's milk as a substitute. Experience continually proves that a healthy infant may be so fed, without danger of inoculated malady.

With all the sins of omission against poetry, and all of commission against good sense, with which this translation abounds, I observed to Mr Saville and cousin White, when we read it together, that the reviewers would applaud it. They exclaimed," Impossible! you are too hard upon reviewers." But, lo! my prophecy is accomplished. I knew that the celebrity which Lorenzo de Medicis has obtained, would make them conclude every production must be good which came from the pen of its author. I believed they were not aware that it is one thing to be a good prosewriter, an industrious linguist, and historian, and even a good classic scholar, and another to be a good poet. From specimens, which I had seen in former years, of Mr Roscoe's verse-writing, the defects of this translation were no great surprise to me. His powers, in that art, are not above mediocrity;—but the suffrages of the reviewers will give this poem present sale; and then, like Glover's Leonidas, it will sink to rise no more. The prefixed sonnet to Mrs Roscoe is pretty-worth more, short as it is, than the old

nurse. If she falls in your or Lady Eleanor's way, you will tell me if the original supports, in any degree, the encomiums of the translator's preface, since it is printed, page by page, with the English.

Do you not admire the poetic sublimity of Coleridge's Ode to the Departed Year, however you may be shocked, as I am shocked, by the presumptuous and unpatriotic excess of condemnation which it pours forth on this country, as if England were the pest and execration of the whole world! It calls us the bloody island. Great, I must confess, has its national guilt appeared to me within the past ten years; yet, I hope, it is not so dark, so extreme, so accursed of God and man, as this ode asserts; but, as poetry, I scarce know any thing superior to the following passage:

"Departed Year! 'twas on no mortal shore
My soul beheld thy vision. Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne
Ay Memory sits; there, garmented with gore,
With many an unimaginable groan,

Thou storiest thy sad hours. Silence ensued,

Deep silence, through th' etherial multitude,

Whose clustering locks with snow-white glories shone.

Then, his eyes wild ardours glancing,

From the choired host advancing,

The Spirit of the Earth made reverence meet,
And stood up beautiful before the cloudy seat."

I have lent the book, and, therefore, quoting from recollection, may possibly be inaccurate in one or two words; but what a sublime image is that of Memory, and I believe it perfectly original; nor less original, less exquisite is that of the Spirit of the Earth. Indistinctness in description is, on certain rare occasions, a poetic excellence, where the object mentioned is of too transcendent splendour to be conceived with precision, either by the poet or his reader. Such is the Spirit of the Earth in this ode: his glory is ineffable,—and the words stood up beautiful, renouncing every aim at determinate picture, leave the imagination of the reader, if he has imagination, thrilled with a consciousness of superhuman perfection. Sublimity, in the highest possible degree, thus results from indistinctness in Milton's portrait of Death when he encounters Satan; and infinite poetic beauty, from the same source, when Ossian "Fair as the spirit of the hill, when it glides in a sunbeam at noon, over the silence of Morven."

I remain, dearest Madam, &c.

says:

LETTER XXXV.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

April 16, 1799.

THE first fateful night of your tragedy is at hand. I shall inquire after its reception with agitated solicitude. My pen has endeavoured to secure the attendance, interest, and support of all my London correspondents on this occasion.You have never told me even its title; but I observed to them that a new tragedy, to be presented in the course of this week, and through whose scenes Mrs Siddons was pledged to exert her powers and her graces, must be yours; and that, from your long mutual friendship, they would be exerted con amore.

I have seldom experienced a literary longing of so much impatience as to see your play. If it has the interest, pathos, and spirit of your domestic epic, the fascinating Edwy and Edilda, I shall love it, eveu if you have put it into the strictest fetters of the unities. A weak defence of them accidentally came in my way, since I last wrote to you upon the subject. It was written, some