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black Tartarian vomit,' of their plucking the apples of Sodom, of their encountering Lot's wife in the form of a transparent pillar of salt,' and of their finding at Bethel the very stone which Jacob made his pillow. With the exception of the fabulous apples of Sodom, these incidents might have occurred in their journey, but the insertion of them is not authorized by the account of the Jewish Lawgiver; and the same may be observed of the fictitious dialogues of which the greatest part of this volume is composed. Our great poet has attempted, in his Paradise Regained, to furnish us with the speeches which passed in the Wilderness between our Saviour and the Devil. but we believe that few peruse this poetic supplement to the Gospels with any pleasure, and we should have thought that the failure of MILTON would have discouraged Sir James Bland Burges and Mr. Cumberland.

Most invention, as we have before remarked, is to be found. in that part of the work which introduces "Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons." This demon is the Satan of the poem, and is closely copied from its prototype in the Paradise Lost.

Will not the following passage remind every reader of Milton's celebrated description of his hero, B. I. 592, &c.:

His visage now display'd

Tarnish'd magnificence, that dimly show'd
A faded remnant of his splendor past :
Fall'n spirit though he was, there yet emerg'd

A ray of majesty, not quite eclips'd.'

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As far as simplicity of style' is concerned, we are ready to allow these gentlemen some praise. The conceptions are natural, the language is not laboured, and the speeches are in general adapted to the characters of the speakers as well as to the situations in which they are supposed to be placed. We shall deduce a few specimens: but we must first report the contents of the remaining books of this partnership poem.The sixth book relates the tumult occasioned by the report of the spies and the destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. In the seventh, Moses pronounces sentences upon the rebellious people-The evil spirits are dispersed-The period of the Israelites abode in the wilderness being passed, Moses gives order for their march towards Canaan-The gods of the idolatrous nations assemble on the mountains of Abarim, where Chemes resorts to them - Balak, King of Moab, holds a council with the confederate kings-Balaam arrives at his camp, and delivers his prophecy, and blesses Israel, whom he was called upon to curse-His predictions are disregarded,

and a battle becomes inevitable.' The argument of the eighth and last book, is, The discomfiture of the Pagan hostThe death of Balak-Joshua destroys the Grove of ChemosHas an interview with Balaam-Chemos, driven to the infernal regions, seeks protection of Satan-Satan contends with the Archangel Michael for the body of Moses-Moses ascends Mount Pisgah-Addresses his last speech to Joshua and the People-Dies, and the Poem concludes.' The speech of Joshua to the Israelites, on his return from exploring the land of Canaan, is thus conceived:

"Princes, the land, that we were sent to search,
Is strong, and rich in produce. We have made
A circuit, wide as our commission went,
Clear from the confines of the Syrian realm
To Tyre and Sidon on the Western sea.
Azor and Salem, of our pagan
foe

Imperial cities, jointly we beheld;
But Hebron, seat of Abram and his sons,
By Caleb and myself alone was seen.

I state not this, as glancing blame on these,
Who shar'd our labours; ample was the plea
For their detention; but if they shall tell
Of giant Anakim, as chance they may,
And fearfully describe their monstrous bulk,
They speak not from the evidence of sight,
As I and Caleb may. The men are tall,
Misshapen, huge, a burden to themselves,
And such as only, when at distance view'd,
May catch the warrior's eye, but, in the charge
Of battle, will be fac'd without alarm.
Of Jabin's host we took a near survey;
A multitude it was of various hordes,
The gathering of the nations; but a mass

So ill compacted, formless, and inert,

Their very numbers, which should be their strength,
Were in effect their weakness. Such our foe,

And such the slight account I hold of them,
Their armies and defences: sure I am,

Let Israel only to itself be true,

Their kings, their cities, and their gods shall fall
Before the armies of the living Lord.”

Caleb also makes an oration to the same purpose, in reply to Shammua and Gaddiel.

To shew with what success the Miltonic diabolical language is imitated, we transcribe the speech of Chemos to the gods. of the idolatrous nations assembled on the lofty summits of Abarim, after the destruction of Korah and his associates:

"Hither,

"Hither, ye fearful ministers of Him Whom hell's stern legions fruitlessly oppose, Hither in all your attributes of fire,

Earthquake and storm and pestilence repair,

And, like those suff'ring wretches, o'er whose heads
The solid earth, so late disparted, clos'd,

To the deep centre hurl me!

From your clouds,
With angry vapours charg'd, let thunders break,
And vollied lightnings blast me! Blow, ye winds,
And through the dark and trackless void of space,
Oh plant me on creation's utmost verge,
Where haply shelter'd from the searching ken
Of that Omnipotence, which mocks my toil,
Chaos may shrowd my shame! It will not be !
The pow'r, 'gainst whom we league, will not rel
He that made all things, hath not made a placeent;
Where his discarded angels may repose:

Nor will my torments pause; too deeply lodg'd,
The fest'ring poison must devour my heart;
The recollection of departed bliss,

The strong conviction of unceasing pangs,
For ever are my portion. His decree
Immutable has pass'd: in him no change,
In us there is no hope but to pursue
With wrath eternal his selected race;
And though no Korah live to aid our cause,
And spread rebellion through his favour'd tribes,
Yet when our altars blaze through every tract
Of the wide world, whilst here his Levites hymn
Faint hallelujahs in the desart air,

Good hope, though our angelic thrones be lost,
Still we may wage more equal battle here;
And from the myriads of dependent orbs,
That circle through the infinite of space
Round his resplendent throne, may rescue one,
And be the lords of earth, as he of heav'n!"

Parodying, or rather copying Milton, these fiends are subsequently exhorted to rouse and defend their thrones, or be for ever lost."

With what propriety Balaam is represented as an idolater, (p. 365.) we are at a loss to divine, since the sacred page. does not so describe him: but his speech to Balak is not an unfaithful transcript of the Jewish historian:

"From Aram, from the mountains of the east,
The King of Moab summons me to curse
Thee, Jacob; and thee Israel! to defy.-
How shall I curse him, whom God curseth not,
And how defy whom He hath not defied?
Behold, I have received command to bless ;

From

From God, the sole, eternal Lord of all,

Came forth the word; from the great source of truth,
Who knows not error, nor repentance needs.
Hath He not said, and shall He not fulfil?
In Jacob God hath not beheld offence;
In Israel no perverseness hath He found;
But, in His cloudless majesty array'd,
Their ever-present God supreme He reigns:
His voice is heard amongst them: His right hand
From their Egyptian bondage set them free.
I see them from the summit of the rocks,
Countless in number, matchless in their strength.
Who shali affront their vengeance? All their foes
Shall they consume, and utterly destroy :
Distinct, appropriate empire shall they hold,
Unnumber'd with the nations, and unmix'd,
Oh favour'd race, how goodly are thy tents!
Not more luxuriant spread the winding vales,
Not more superb the garden's varied pride,
Less beautiful the clustr'ing aloe's bloom,
And less stupendous the vast cedar's height.
He, who shall bless thee, shall of God be blest,
And he, who curseth, be himself accurst.
Oh! that my latter end like thine may be,
Serene in righteousness, confirm'd in hope!-
But ah! what wonders burst upon my sight!
The clouds which veil'd futurity pass off,
And unborn nations croud upon my view.
All-power'ful God! support me, or I faint!
Now, now, they rush upon me-now they fade-
1 shall, I shall behold Him, but not now-
Hereafter shall I see Him, but not nigh-
A star from out of Jacob shall appear-
A sceptre out of Israel shall arise-
Moab's romotest quarters shall it smite,
And Seth's devoted race shall be destroy'd-
Captive shall Idumæa's sons be led-
Esau the yoke of servitude shall bear→
Where now is Amalek? His latter end
Is desolation. He, that once was first
And mightiest of the nations, is no more-
Israel shall triumph. Jordan's stream they pass-
I see them in the promis'd land-they reign-
They flourish-they decay-Assyria's host
Invade assault-defeat bear them away-
'Gainst Ashur and the progeny of Shem
Grecia her conq'ring armaments sends forth-
O'er vanquish'd realms the Roman eagle soars-
The nations fall before them. But it fades !-
It vanishes!—and darkness veils the rest!”

REV. JULY, 1808.

S

Some

Some liberties are taken with scripture proper names, without any apparent reason. Engeddi is transformed into Engaddi, and Adonibezeck into Adonizedeck.-When these gentlemen profess to aim at simplicity, the reader will expect the occasional occurrence of tame lines, and he will not be disappointed.

ART. V.

Construction of several Systems of Fortification; for the Use of the Royal Military Academy. By I. Landmann, Professor of Fortification and Artillery. 8vo. pp. 103. and Folio Plates separate. 138. Egerton. 1807.

MR.

R. Landmann tells us that this work contains the method of constructing several systems of fortification, to form a series of plans, serving as an illustration of the course of lectures given in the Royal Academy.' The plates are twentysix in number, and are stitched together by themselves. After having alluded to the drawings that are to be made from them on half sheets of imperial paper, the mode of representing works of earth and masonry, wet and dry ditches, profiles of earth and masonry, bridges, &c., and of the different colours, he proceeds in plate 1. to give the construction of Vauban's first system on three sides of a hexagon. This is not, however, that celebrated engineer's first method, any farther than it relates to the outline of the body of the place; for it differs essentially in various other respects from the account given of that method both by Mr. Muller and others, and particularly from that which was taken from a French book and published by the Abbot Du Fay, with the approbation of Marshal Vauban himself.

In the first place, Mr. L. constructs the great ditch at the flanked or saliant angles of the bastions, only 18 toises wide, instead of 20; and he makes the faces of his ravelin, even when it wants flanks, meet if produced the faces of the bastions 5 toises from the epaules or shoulders, instead of the shoulders themselves, or the faces, 3 toises only from the same. He determines the saliant angle of his ravelin by intersecting the perpendicular produced with a radius equal to 185-30 Viox toises from the angle of either flank thus making the capital of that work less by at least 8 toises than it is according to Vauban's first method, and considerably increasing the obliquity of the defence of its ditch by the faces of the bastions. He also places his tenailles 5 toises from the flanks instead of 3 only as in that method, and in the direction of the lines of defence, without taking any notice of two other sorts of tenailles with flanks that have frequently been used in it.

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