not pick up the seeds of poetry by the Isis or the Cam. They found them on the mountains, on the seas, in forests, and by running rivers,-----in Cumberland, and Italy, and Greece. They were not content with cloistral studies, nor conventional systems of rhyme: but they looked at the naked nature, and into their own hearts, and drew thence thoughts and images which will live for ever. We think that Mr. Beddoes has in a great measure done the same. But he must, we conjecture, have rambled away from his "rooms," and from the grave presence of Pembroke Hall, before he gave himself up to the endearments of the Muse. The aspect of a Doctor or Professor, how ever intelligent, does not certainly generate poetical ideas. The wig, the gown, the paraphernalia of a college, may sometimes beget respect, but it is not possible for them to entice us on the Muse's flowery ways. They are in the opposition themselves. Besides this, the upholding of old established ideas, however however right in itself, operates necessarily against thinking. We argue in favour of what others have said, but we say nothing new ourselves. Early thinking may be bad,---or good: we do not profess to give an opinion on that head: but that thinking is necessary in poetry as well as prose, we must insist,--notwithstanding the many instances of success on the contrary side of the question.

Mr. Beddoes then is a poet. He is one of great hope and of very considerable performance. But he has

faults; and we will tell him of them as frankly as we speak of his merits. In the first place, there is a want of earnestness very often in his play. He toys with his subject too much; and this (which is delightful in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, and such works) is destructive to a tale of midnight murder. The writer of a drama must often sacrifice poetry to passion, and fine phrase to the general purpose of his story. On the contrary, our author frequently makes his huntsmen and servants talk good courtly (or if he pleases poetical) language. We appeal to Mr. Beddoes, whether Hubert talks like a huntsman-though we admit that he talks very well. He says, that it is " a fearful time,"

If Mr. Beddoes to our accusation replies, that Hubert (for we do not collect distinctly what he is) is superior to a huntsman, we retort with the "huntsman's" own words, The roar has ceased: the hush of intercalm

Numbs with its leaden finger Echo's lips, And angry spirits in mid havoc pause. (P. 74.)

although in the same page Mr. Beddoes has given as plain a picture (and it is fine from its very simplicity) as we could wish. Our friend the huntsman speaks again: The forest has more tenants than I knew, Look underneath this branch; see'st thou

Again, there are passages of a different sort (and indeed, it is in them that the author excels) equally delightful. He is speaking of the time

when "fantastic dreams" mix with

the sleeper's fancies, While that winged song, the restless nightingale,

Turns her sad heart to music. (P. 3.) This is as fine and beautiful as poetry can be. Shakspeare might have written it. Of the violet, he says, it is

Like Pandora's eye, When first it darkened with immortal life.

(P. 4.)

But we are criticizing Mr. Beddoes's play, thout having informed our readers of the particulars of the story. They are as follows.

The Manciple of one of the colleges at Oxford, early in the last century, had a very beautiful daughter, who was privately married to a stu

dent without the knowledge of the parents on either side. Shortly afterwards, he was introduced to a young lady who was at the same time proposed as his bride. Absence, his father's displeasure, and the presence of the new object, divorced him from his old regard. He grew enamoured of the second lady, and destroyed the poor girl who had privately become his wife. He decoyed her to a solitary spot in the Divinitywalk, murdered, and buried her. The deed was never known till he discovered it on his death-bed.

Of this play, the three first acts are decidedly the best. And the reason is this; that, after the end of the third act, we have nothing to learn except that the murderer dies. The interest runs up to the part in which Floribel (the girl) is murdered by her lover and husband, Hesperus, and then it falls. He marries again (also in the third act) but it must be owned that he is less interesting afterwards. There is not much attempt at character in the play. Both Floribel and Olivia are gentle girls -Hesperus is a person swayed by circumstances and his own passions -Claudio is a sort of joker and the rest have no very distinguishing traits. We have heard it said (in reply to our strongly expressed admiration of this play) that it wants interest, and character, and unity of purpose, &c. This is true to a certain extent. But a great part of the interest of a play arises from the mechanical construction of it; and this Mr. Beddoes will easily acquire. Delightful passages, striking scenes, may be scattered about, but if a drama wants the ap pearance of a main serious purpose, it will necessarily fail with the great body of readers. We would fain impress this on Mr. Beddoes. Let him try to fix his scenes closely, one within the other, - to "dovetail them, as cabinet makers would say, and he will find that the appearance of his dramas will be materially better. It is to be recollected, however, that the first plays of all authors have failed

ور

in the mechanism. Look at Shakspeare's first (and cruelly under-rated) play of Pericles: -the hero's hairs grow grey in the course of it. His second play is more regular, but there he is indebted to Plautus. His third and fourth (if they are indeed his) -the two parts of Henry VI. are

rambling and strange enough. And in that exquisite Fantasia, the Midsummer Night's Dream, we scarcely know who are the heroes and heroines. Let us pardon our author, therefore, on account of his failures in the joiner's p part of tragedy (he will soon amend that), and look only to his delightful poetry.

The following soliloquy of Hesperus has a gloomy grandeur about it.

Hail, shrine of blood, in double shadows veil'd,

Where the Tartarian blossoms shed their poison

And load the air with wicked impulses; Hail, leafless shade, hallow'd to sacrilege, Altar of death. Where is thy deity? With him I come to covenant, and thou, Dark power, that sittest in the chair of night, Searching the clouds for tempests with thy brand, Proxy of Hades; list and be my witness, And bid your phantoms all, (the while I speak

What if they but repeat in sleeping ears Will strike the hearer dead, and mad his soul ;)

Spread wide and black and thick their
Lest the appalled sky do pale to day.
Eternal people of the lower world,
Ye citizens of Hades' capitol,
That by the rivers of remorseless tears
Sit and despair for ever;
Ye negro brothers of the deadly winds,
Ye elder souls of night, ye mighty sins,
Sceptred damnations, how may man invoke
Your darkling glories? Teach my cager
soul
Fit language for your ears. Ye that have
O'er births and swoons and deaths, the
(Wont to convey her from her human home
Beyond existence, to the past or future,
To lead her through the starry blossom'd
Where the young hours of morning by the
With earthly airs are nourish'd, through
Of silent gloom, beneath whose breathless
The thousand children of Calamity
Play murtherously with men's hearts:) Oh
Your universal occupations leave.
-The reader may now take a lighter
extract. It is from the early part of
the drama, and shows how gracefully
Mr. Beddoes can handle a somewhat
trite subject. Hesperus and Floribel
have met in a bower of eglantine and

And thus his bride replies:

Jealous so soon, my Hesperus? Look then,

It is a bunch of flowers I pulled for you : Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye, When first it darkened with immortal life. Hesperus. Sweet as thy lips. Fie on those taper fingers,

Have they been brushing the long grass aside

To drag the daisy from its hiding-place, Where it shuns light, the Danäe of flowers, With gold up-hoarded on its virgin lap? Floribel. And here's a treasure that I found by chance,

Of all the posy

Floribel. Quite through my soul, That all my senses, deadened at the blow,

A lily of the valley; low it lay
Over a mossy mound, withered and weeping
As on a fairy's grave.

Hesperus.

blood

Of a gay bee, that in his wantonness Toyed with a peabud in a lady's garland ;) The felon winds, confederate with him, Bound the sweet slumberer with golden chains,

Pulled from the wreathed laburnum, and together Deep cast him in the bosom of a rose, And fed the fettered wretch with dew and air. (P. 4, 5.)

We close our extracts with part of the scene where Hesperus murders Floribel; though the reader must understand, that the beauties of Mr. Beddoes's writing are so scattered over his play, that we cannot very well, by extracts, unless they were very long, do him justice. He wants, as we have said, earnestness sometimes, and but too often trifles a little with his subject; but there are marks of great and undoubted talent in his play; and the whole is clothed in poetical dress thing-though we do call ours poetical age,") than we have for a very long time seen displayed to the public. We hope that the public will appreciate it.

(a

Some spirit in thy sleep hath stole thy body And filled it to the brim with cruelty; Farewell, and may no busy deathful tongue Whisper this horror in thy waking ears, Lest some dread desperate sorrow urge thy soul

To deeds of wickedness. Whose kiss is that?

Her very tresses stiffen in the air.
Look, what a face: had our first mother
But half such beauty when the serpent
His heart, all malice, would have turned
to love;

came,

No hand but this, which I do think was

once

Cain, the arch-murtherer's, could have And I must hide these sweets, not in my bosom, In the foul earth. She shudders at my grasp; Just so she laid her head across my bosom When first-oh villain! which way lies the grave? (Exit.) (P. 71, 73.)

rhime to each other, as, charity, misery; disfigured, established, &c. In the arrangement of their rhimes, they sometimes set them close together, and sometimes at the distance of many lines asunder: sometimes they accumulated three lines, or more, together, having the same rhime, and sometimes they distributed the same rhime through the greatest part of a long stanza.

In the whole compass, therefore, of English versification, there does not appear to be any room left for discovery. Former poets have explored every source of novelty, and have diversified our language by every contrivance which inventive genius could suggest. The result of their experiments is for the poet of the present day. All their store lies before him, where he may choose and reject according to his judgment; and his only care, in this part of his work, will be to polish and improve what he may think fit to adopt.

As the province of criticism is humbler than that of poetry, so likewise the critic descends to minuter objects of inquiry than are usually deemed necessary for the poet to regard. For the poet it may be thought sufficient to know that certain modes of versification are agreeable to the taste, and others disgusting; that such and such rhimes and measures are approved of, and such again not allowed; but it is the business of the critic to examine more nearly, and unfold the causes why these things are some of them pleasing and others not. For this purpose he must analyze his subject, and observe the smallest parts which enter into the composition of a verse. This is a labour which, though the writer of verses may be unwilling to engage in himself, yet he may not be averse to attend to the investigation, when it is made by another for his service; because he may by those means acquire some information, which will be useful to him in "the pursuit of his art, and which will neither be difficult to comprehend, nor burdensome to remember.

SECTION I.

Of the Elcmentary Parts of Verse. The simplest elements of verse are letters of letters are formed syllables-of syllables feet of feet a verse.

As verses are made for pronunciation, their effect on the ear is not to be neglected: and to produce a good effect, the smallest parts which enter into their composition must be considered, viz. the letters, as whether they be rough or smooth to the sense, and of easy or difficult combination for the utterance. And here we come to a part of the subject, to which our English alphabet bears so close a relation, that some of its defects and strange anomalies require to be noticed.

The account given of the first letter is, that it has three distinct sounds, which are heard in Hal (a nicname), Hale (healthy), and Hall (a large room).

Now a certain and determinate vowel sound is formed by the organs of speech, when in a determinate position; and a change of that position changes the vowel as well as the sound; there being no difference between one vowel and another, but what is made by such a change. To pronounce the letter a in the different words given above, three different positions of the organs of speech are necessary; and therefore, though it is written by the same character, and called by the same name, it is in reality three different vowels.

But vowel sounds admit of a difference, without changing the vowel, in respect of what is termed quantity; that is, the time taken up in their pronunciation; and as this time may be more or less, they are all, except one, divisible into long and short, after the manner which will presently be shown.

And in this another great defect of our alphabet will appear. The difference of quantity in our vowels is not marked, in writing, uniformly, nor by any rule or set of rules'; it is entirely irregular. :

The difference between our short