nected with his subject, he thinks it necessary to give a dull and prosing account of the manner in which an eastern correspondence is managed; and having talked a great deal about Indian and Persian impressions of seals of state which have fallen into his possession, he adds, 'Among other subjects of like value, I am fortunate enough to possess an unopened letter, written by the late Great Moghul Shah Allum, to a personage of high consideration, with his signet unbroken. Any virtuoso desirous (as all such must surely be) of enriching his cabinet with so great a curiosity, may be accommodated with it on reasonable terms.' (p. 127.) On reading this passage we turned back to the title page to ascertain whether we had not committed a mistake by transcribing F.R.S. instead of F.A.S. and thus set down Mr. Moor as a person 'well skilled in various branches of natural science,' when we ought to have designated him as a dealer in broken pots and illegible manuscripts. If, however, there be any error in his titles, the printer solely is to blame.

We cannot think very highly of Mr. Moor's illustrations.' He is one of those who refer the origin of all human knowledge, institutions and customs to the Hindoos; who discover, in its purity, the philosophy of the schools of Athens and Rome in the Vedas and Puranas. Flowing from the Brahmans, the Greeks and Romans, Mr. Moor assures us, received it filtered through the priesthood of Egypt. The story of Telemachus appears to him to be stolen from the Travels and Adventures of Kamarupa;' and the fabulous relation of the Amazons was certainly borrowed from the Hindoos, because Hamazen means all-women, and is pronounced very much as we sound Amazon. Nay, he is almost con--› vinced that the gold stick in waiting at St. James's was borrowed from the Choabdar, or staff-bearer of an Indian Behudar, who, as he says, carries a baton of silver;' and it is nearly certain with him, that our Christmas Bores travelled all the way from Persia, because there the word Bakshish signifies a gift. We are heartily weary of such fooleries, which answer no other purpose than to bring into contempt what little of value may be discovered among the remains of antiquity in Hindostan.

ART. XIII. The Vision of Don Roderick; a Poem. By Walter Scott, Esq. 4to. pp. 140. Edinburgh, Ballantyne and Co.; London, Longman and Co. 1811.

WHEN the Goddess of Beauty was presented by her sire to the applause of the assembled immortals, the critics of the upper world, as soon as the first effect of surprize and admiration

was

was over, were divided in opinion. Among the inhabitants of heaven as well as earth, there is, it seems, a certain levelling principle, which is uneasy under the shadow of a neighbour's renown, and ever anxious to reduce obnoxious excellence, by plausible deductions, to the general standard of its fellows. In this inclination both parties agreed; but in the means pursued, they were completely opposed to each other. The first acknowledged with apparent candour, the beauty of Cytherea's complexion, and the commanding majesty of her form: the bounty of nature had left nothing to desire; but they could not help regretting that these native charms were so little improved by art, or controuled by the principles of a judicious taste. Her gait was awkward and her garments ill-disposed; the Graces, it should seem, had been but clumsy tirewomen; and it was impossible not to feel disgust at the fashion of her girdle and the intolerable creaking of her slippers.

But, while this was the opinion of her graver and more decorous examinants; their antagonists with equal warmth, and more ill-nature, denied at once that either in face or figure the new goddess was at all superior to many among the meaner damsels of the sky.-Her dazzling exterior and her graceful motion; the judicious folds of her robe, and the witchery of her golden tresses, these were the secret of her beauty and her fame; and above all, they whispered that, take away her cestus and her Persian shoes, the daughter of Jupiter would dwindle into a mere dowdy. The goddess

shrunk back in confusion and distress from the clamour of these irreconcileable disputants; but was restored to peace of mind by the recollection that opposite censures could not both be true,— and by the promise of her parent, that the great majority both of gods and men should take their opinion of her person from the first, and of her dress from the last of these revilers.

A measure like this has been dealt, we believe, since the world began, to every author of commanding and original genius. His novelties of subject, of prosody, and of style, (and every original genius has delighted more or less to wander in these respects from the beaten track of authority,) have by a certain class of critics been made the subject of grave debate and bitter persecution; while that sordid crew, who seem to themselves less obscure in proportion as their neighbour's lustre is diminished, are fond of ascribing his fame to some paltry trick of popularity-to the influence of a fashionable subject, or the tinkling of an unusual measure. The first lament with decent reluctance over talents misapplied, and imagination wasted on themes which can inherit no lasting renown, in numbers below the dignity of the heroic muse. The others attribute to these same peculiarities all the beauty he can boast, or all the admiration he has attracted; and exclaim aloud against the semi

barbarous

barbarous and deluded age, which can profanely ornament such gaudy novelty with the wreath of real excellence. Both, however, are united in the conclusion that this provoking height of popularity is

and exult alike in the comfortable prophecy of a speedy downfal to the intruder who has dared to climb Parnassus by any but its regu lar gradus.

To both these classes of persecutors Mr. Scott has been a long time obnoxious; and though we have reason to believe that neither the forebodings of the one, nor the venom of the other, have very materially disturbed his repose, he has at length complied with the wishes of both: he has accepted the defiance of his enemies by abandoning the vantage-ground of Scottish scenery, and flinging, like his own Celtic chieftain, the target and the plaid on the ground; and he has followed the opinion of his more friendly critics, in the choice of a subject with which every heart might be supposed to sympathize on either bank of the Tweed, and a stanza which (though for various reasons it has been less generally employed than most of our English measures) is sanctioned by the invention of Spenser, and the applause, if not the adoption, of all our more illustrious poets for the last three hundred years.

For ourselves, we have not been among those of Mr. Scott's advisers, who shake the head, and whisper much, and change the countenance' at every little instance of departure from a classical model; who gravely admonish him to revert in good time to the old established trammels of poetry; and cry out against the heinous offence of delighting the world in an unusual way. It is enough for us, and it would, we believe, have been enough for Aristotle, that a narrative should have plot, and interest, and action and pathos; that it should be adorned with beautiful imagery, and told in unaffected language; and that the character of the emotions excited by its perusal should be animated, dignified and pure: nor can we help attributing to a very different school than that of classical prescription, the fastidiousness which rejects as unworthy of immortal verse the contests of a petty tribe, or the events of an uncivilized age; or which cannot feel an interest in any hero who is not backed by fifty thousand men. The number of actors with which a stage may be crowded, or the political importance of the subject of a poem, has always appeared to us completely irrelevant to that display of personal character which alone induces interest or esteem: we can sympathize with the anger of Achilles, at least as much as with the ambition of Cæsar; and the petty chief of Ithaca

is in our prejudiced eyes better adapted to poetry than the wide-ruling hero of the political romance of Xenophou. Nay, farther, we are not sure whether the great historical events to which the service of the muse is thus required to be consecrated, are not in truth from their very notoriety less adapted to a poet's purpose than themes of smaller scope and more obscurity. Narrative poetry is nothing but another name for fiction, and fiction always revolts us when it ventures to intrude on the broad light of history and politics. Tasso and Lucan will be always thrown aside for the adventurous dreams of Ariosto; and (looking with all due reverence to the noblest com position on the most aweful subject that ever employed an earthly pen) it may be doubted whether the weariness which Johnson attributes to the readers of Milton may not be traced, where it does exist certainly not to any want of harmony in his lines or splendour in his imagery, but to the weight of a subject where there is no novelty to reward perseverance, and no suspense to stimulate attention. It is not then with us a subject of regret that the powers of Mr. Scott have been employed on themes which, though in themselves unimportant, have in his hands been found replete with all the requisites of poetry; and to the varieties of his verse we are, if possible, still more indifferent. Harmony, we allow, is a consideration of vital importance to the beauty or the popularity of a poem: but of harmony the simple principles are very few; and the pleasure derived to the ear from any disposition of words must depend on syllabic rhythm, rather than corresponding metres, and this may be obtained as perfectly in the varied lines and ballad prosody of Mr. Scott or Mr. Southey as in any of the more regular forms of blank verse, couplet, or stanza.

But if it be absurd and pedantic to predict disgrace and downfal from circumstances which, whether right or wrong, do certainly leave the principles of pleasing unimpaired; it is on the other hand at least as preposterous to ascribe a public estimation, such as Mr. Scott enjoys, to the peculiar cast of those features which are in truth but the accidents of poetry, and which far from conferring, can only themselves receive a beauty from the manner in which they are disposed, and the grace of the person who wears them.— As capricious a nymph as Popularity is often imagined, her favours are not so cheaply purchased as to be the reward of mere sound and tinsel for their own sake; and a wide distinction is to be made in this respect between present popularity and present fame. The last is the decision of the talking and criticising part of society, where favouritism and prejudice may, and must occasionally prevail; the former is the verdict of too numerous a court to be influenced by any unworthy motive, and it is therefore, though sometimes for a time unjustly refused, yet rarely bestowed erroneously.

We

We often praise a work because we like the author, but we seldom purchase what we are not fond of reading; and therefore, though many a writer has sunk after extravagant applause into utter oblivion, there is, we believe, no instance, in works of mere amusement, of the judgment of many editions being in any material degree reversed by posterity.

Novelty too, on which so great a stress is laid by those querulous assailants of their own time, who fancy that in the opinion of the public the newest comer always ranks the first, is by no means so powerful a principle as is often supposed. It may excite attention, but its favourable effects undoubtedly terminate there. Mankind are never over-ready to allow an unknown adventurer to depart from the established rules of taste or authority; and the praise of an inventor is almost always admitted with reluctauce: when a poem differs in many respects from whatever we are accustomed to read or admire, it is always approved at first with timidity, and perused with effort and distrust. Scarcely any of our best known works can be named, where a new style or metre has been adopted, which has not, from this very cause, been slow in its passage to popularity. Milton was, and Southey is, a proof how intolerant the public are of change; and if Mr. Scott has never felt this impediment, it is because his way had been gradually cleared by the ballads and romances of twenty years preceding, and because he has in no point so widely departed from prescription as the two whose names have just been instanced. While, therefore, we almost felt concerned that the muse of Albyn had relinquished her huntress garb of glossy green,' and wandered so widely from her original seat of inspiration; we contemplated without alarm the descent of our favourite author into an untried field, and a region where his banners had not yet been planted. To the bard as well as to the conqueror omne solum patria:' and few more congenial scenes could be presented to an ardent imagination, than those which a nobler cause than accident has here suggested. Nor must we omit, though it may seem perhaps inconsistent with our previously expressed opinion, that, with all our indifference to the particular metres of real poetry, the stanza which Mr. Scott has chosen is one to which, from early recollections, we are particularly attached; and one which, in a few former instances, he had shewn himself able to wield with no common dexterity. It admits perhaps of more variety of cadence, and more simplicity of language, than any other arrangement of decasyllable verse; and only requires, to make it the favourite of the majority of readers as well as of poets, that it should be freed from the burden of obsolete phraseology, and be applied to some other purpose than the chilling maze of didactic allegory.

VOL. VI NO. XI.

The