loverlike fears as to her being forgotten by the Glendoveer, which are expressed with great delicacy and tenderness. The canto ends with affected and disagreeable abrubtness, by suddenly telling us, in four lines, that she was carried off from this lonely retreat by a band of wandering priests, who were travelling to find a bride for Jaga Naut, the idol with seven heads.

The fourteenth section is named after this captivating deity; and is one of the most obstreperous, confusing, and disagreeable in the volume. There is a noisy and insupportably tedious description of the procession of the giant idol in his chariot, and of the shouting, dancing and singing, with which his nuptials with Kailyal are celebrated. Then the unhappy victim is shut up in the bridal chamber, and sees approaching to her the accursed and incorrigible Arvalan, clothed, as usual, in the borrowed flesh of man. We doubt whether the pious virgin was more disgusted than most of Mr. Southey's readers will be, at this unpardonable intrusion. However, she shrieks lustily, and down comes the faithful Glendoveer, who dashes her unworthy paramour to pieces on the floor. But, at this instant, his amiable friend and procuress, the witch, appears with a legion of fiends, who seize and pinion the Glendoveer, while she patches up the mangled body of her favourite, and encourages him to take his pleasure [such is Mr. Southey's style] with the lady, while she secures his rival in the ancient sepulchres under the ocean. Kailyal being thus left once more with the amorous defunct, takes a torch, and sets fire to the curtains; and, while her lover roars with the scorching pain, she herself is rescued by her father, who walks unhurt through the flames, under the protection of his curse, and bears out his astonished daugh

ter.

The next canto is called "the city of Baly," and abounds in splendid description, and the brighter fruits of a poetical imagination. Baly, we learn, was a mighty monarch of former days, who built a superb city by the sea shore; and was afterwards appointed judge of hell; upon which the sea rose, and overflowed his earthly city, leaving only a few mouldering towers and spires peering above its lonely waters. Ladurlad conjectures, that it is in the royal sepulchres of this submarine capital that the witch has deposited the captive Glendoveer; and being gifted, by the curse, with the power of walking under water, resolves to go and attempt his deliverance. The appearance of the city, from the sculptured and rocky shore, is very finely described; and the anxious hope with which his lovely daughter sees him descend into the abyss, and waits day after day, with growing terrour, on the silent and solitary strand.

The following section is of the same general character. It is entitled "The Ancient Sepulchres," and contains the account of Ladurlad's acquatick adventure. The appearance of the drowned city, its sculptured gateways, and palaces and temples, and lonely streets and gardens, all shining in the green light of the incumbent ocean; all silent, and entire, and desolate, is represented with great power of colouring. Ladurlad wanders long, in astonishment, through this portentous scene; but at last descends into the arched sepulchres of the kings, where, by the light of a huge carbuncle, he discovers their embalmed bodies, each placed in a nich on his chair of state; and, at one end, the unfortunate Glendoveer chained to a rock, and watched by a huge sea monster with a mouth from ear to ear," triple rows of teeth, and two long sinuous tails. This formidable guardian immediately flies upon his un

expected visiter: but his life had been charmed from teeth as well as water; and he finds he can make no impression upon his impassive body. Being a fish of conscience, however, he will not permit him to rescue his prisoner, but holds him fast in his coils; while he, in return, attempts to throttle the monster, and extricate himself from his grasp. This preposterous struggle is continued for no less than seven entire days; at the end of which, the monster being overcome with want of sleep [a necessity from which also the curse has dispensed his antagonist] is at last obliged to give out, and fairly gives up the ghost, under the obstinate harassment of his enemy. Ladurlad then finds an old sword, with which he hacks a while at the Glendoveer's fetters, and at last sets him free; and they both, make the best of their way back to the upper light of day.

The eighteenth canto is called "Baly," and describes the reunion of the happy family. The said Baly, it seems, had annually one night of vacation from his judicial function in hell, which he employed in taking a cool walk over India, and revisiting the precincts of his old flooded city. By great good luck, the night on which Ladurlad emerged with the Glendoveer to rejoin his daughter, was the night of this annual promenade; and the worthy Baly was consequently a witness of their encounter. His assistance, as it turns out, was highly opportune; for, while they are all embracing in speechless joy, the loathsome Arvalan appears "in fleshy form," with his patroness the witch; and is just about to remand the celestial rival to his bonds, when the good judge interposes; collars the impious pair with irresistible strength, stamps upon the earth, which opens beneath him, and bears down the guilty beings to his own realm of punishment.

The next canto is entitled "Kahama's Descent." For this tender

father, having heard his son's shrieks, as he was arrested, rushes down to his relief, smoking, as Mr. Southey assures us, with very rage and resentment. He roars to Baly to deliver up his victim; but the old gentleman answers from the cellarage, that the rajah has not yet won the dominion of Padalon, and that his habeas corpus cannot be allowed him. The almighty rajah then turns, with softened looks to Kailyal; and tells her that it is doomed by fate, that he and she alone, of all mortals, shall drink together the Amreeta cup of immortality, and that she must therefore consent to be his bride. She refuses, with expressions of disgust and horrour; and he soars back to the Swerga, scattering curses on them as he rose.

The next canto, entitled "Mount Calasay," begins well; but soon wanders into bombast, extravagance, and mock sublimity. One effect of the rajah's farewell curse had been, to crust over the pure beauty of Kailyal with leprosy; and nothing can be more beautiful than the representation of her womanly feelings of apprehension and pain at the thought of

appearance she would make in the eyes of her Glendoveer, gradually giving way to a proud reliance on her inward merits and his unchangeable affection. The reader is then called to accompany the said Glendoveer in his bold attempt to reach the inaccessible throne of Seeva the Preserver, to whom he is resolved to carry the tale of Kahama's atrocities. This throne was enshrined, it seems, in such immeasurable distance, that Brama and Vishnu had formerly travelled a thousand years without being able to reach it: but the Glendoveer, born up by faith, arrives, in an incredible short space of time at the foot of Mount Calasay, which is a silver mountain set round with seven ladders; and, having reached the summit, he finds a broad table of gems, a sacred triangle, and a

rose; and, over all, a silver bell, self suspended in the air, but no life, nor sound, nor visible presence. Overawed and confounded by the holy solitude and silence, he prays aloud to the omnipresent deity, and ventures to strike the silver bell; upon which the table, and the mountain itself, and all the mystick scene, vanish away in a flood of intolerable light; and, while the daz. zled angel falls headlong from the giddy height, he hears a solemn voice direct him to repair to the throne of Yamen (the king of Padalon, or Hell) and there await the end.

The twentieth canto is entitled "The Embarkation;" and sets the whole pious party forward on this desperate voyage. There is a very pretty scene between Kailyal and the Glendoveer, when she first meets him with her altered form. They then journey together to the end of the world, where they find a crazy vessel riding in a stormy creek that opens out to a sea overhung with impenetrable darkness, step aboard, and push out into that gloomy

ocean.

The next section, entitled: "The World's End," terminates the voyage. They soon shoot across the zone of darkness that seemed to bar their way, and emerge into a softer and purer light; upon enter ing which, Ladurlad feels the burning curse departed from his heart and brain; and the leprous train falls off from the bright and blooming beauties of Kailyal. They then reach a level belt of ice that bounds the tranquil ocean before them; and find it peopled with the souls of departed men, proceeding on their destined way to the throne of Yamen, and the judgment-seat of Baly. The plain of ice is bounded, on the farther side, by a broad and profound gulph, beyond which rise the rocky foundations of the second earth. From this gulph ascend, every now and then, the ministering spirits

of Padalon, who seize some of the wandering souls, and plunge down with them to their final audit. Kailyal trembles with horrour at the struggles and agonies of those whom conscious guilt forewarned of the doom that awaited them; but the Glendoveer bids her be of good comfort; and, raising her in his arms, shoots down with her to the bottom of the abyss. The fictions of this canto arc very much in the manner of Dante; though the diction is infinitely more ornate and verbose,

The twenty second section, entitled, "The Gate of Padalon," is constructed in the same spirit.There is a description of the economy of Padalon, which seems borrowed somewhat too faithfully from the commonplace Tartarus of the classicks; souls purging off their guilt in fires; rebel spirits cursing, and calling on Kehama; and the stern police of the place growling, and sweating, and scourging them. The Glendoveer brings the maiden to the southern gate, and leaves her in charge of the keeper till he goes back for her father. He then explains their embassy; and the guardian of the way orders out his own chariot, poised upon a single wheel, like a wheelbarrow, wraps the whole party in magick fire-proof robes, and sets. them on the way to the central city of the Yaman.

The twenty third canto is entitled "Padalon;" and is, upon the whole, laborious and turgid, though adorned with some strong painting. After passing through the adamantine portal, the travellers arrive on the edge of a vast sea of fire, over which there is no bridge but one narrow rib of steel, as sharp and fine as the edge of a scymitar. The one wheeled car rises upon this ticklish bridge, and rolls steadily over the red-quivering and loudtossing ocean beneath. Nothing can be more vulgar and undignified

than the scenes they witness after gaining the farther shore. They proceed along a raised causeway; on each side of which are erected little vaults and dungeons, all tenanted by tormented souls, and each supplied with a sluice from the fiery sea, to keep their torments fresh and active. Nothing is heard on all hands but the old Tartarean noises, of chains, lashes, hammers, groans, and execrations; and nothing seen but executioners administering different forms of damnation. The city, however, is built entirely of diamonds, and shines with a light brighter than the midday sun. It is approached by eight brazen bridges crossing the fiery river by which it is surrounded; and in the centre is the palace of Yamen, in the vestibule of which he sits along with Baly, and before them a vacant throne of gold, supported at three of its corners by three living, but red-hot human figures. The pious visitants do homage to the god, who accommodates them beside him; and bids them wait the approaching catastrophe in patience.

The last canto is entitled "The Amreeta;" and opens with the dreaded advent of Kehama to seize the throne of Padalon. The voice of command and of lamentation cease together at his approach; and a dread and awful silence keeps the whole region in suspense. In his plan for the assault of the Diamond city, Mr. Southey certainly outdoes all his former outdoings; for he makes the Rajah divide, or rather multiply, himself, into eight several rajahs of the same form and reality, and march up in this manner, at the same moment, to the eight gates of the place, advance through the streets, and meet at the palace in the centre. The battle between him and Yamen is prudently enveloped in darkness; but Kehama is victorious, and the rightful sovereign prostrated before him. The victor then questions the burning supporters of the

throne, who acknowledges the justice of their doom, and say they wait for a fourth, of equal guilt, to complete their number. He then renews his proposals to Kailyal, which are again rejected with disdain. Upon which, he calls impatiently for the Amreeta cup of immortality; and, at his voice, a huge marble tomb opens, and discovers a giant skeleton, reclining within, with the precious cup in his hand. The spectre rises slowly, and presents the cup to Kehama, saying it had been doomed from eternity for him only, and for Kailyal, of all the children of mankind. The impious monarch eagerly quaffs the potent liquor; but instantly feels inexpressible agony shoot through all his veins; and finds, too late, that he has doomed himself to an immortality of insupportable and incurable pain. His body immediately becomes red-hot; and, urged on by an irresistible force, he moves towards the golden throne, and takes post at the vacant corner. The skeleton then presents the cup to Kailyal, who drinks with pious awe and holy confidence. That instant, a steam of divine fragrance arises from all her frame; and, while she remains entranced in rapture, she feels all that was mortal in her melt softly away, and rises incorruptible, without having tasted the bitterness of death. She now rushes into the arms of her faithful Glendoveer; his fitting bride, his equal in purity and immortality. Yamen gives them his benediction, and directs them to repair to their bower of bliss in the Swerga; and, when he sees Kailyal look with reluctant tenderness and anxiety on her father, assures her that she shall meet with him also in her mother's bower. The car then bears off the blessed pair; and the lord of death, smiling gently on Ladurlad from his golden throne, he sinks, like a child overwearied with play, into a soft slumber; on awaking from which, he finds himself a disembodied spirit, with his wife and

daughter, in the blessed groves of the Swerga.

Such is the faithful outline, and such the principal details of this singular poem; of the fable and incidents of which, our readers, therefore, are now qualified to judge for themselves. Our fault to it is, that it possesses the interest of a fairy tale for children, and not of an epick poem for men; and that the fictions of which it consists, are so utterly extravagant as to lose the power even of producing astonishment. We do not mean to deny, that it does credit to Mr. Southey's powers of invention; but if we are once dispensed from the laws of probability, the task of invention is not very difficult. The great problem is, to devise incidents that shall be new and striking, and yet conformable, in their great outlines, to truth and to human experience. If the last condition be remitted, fiction is an art of very vulgar attainment. Who looks with envy upon the author of baron Munchausen's adventures?

But, even where beautiful description and striking sentiments are interwoven with extravagant fiction, the effect of the latter ingredient is always debasing and unpleasant, And there seems to be two reasons for this, independent of the painful and intense feeling of impossibility that stands constantly in the way even of the most momentary illusion. In the first place, we do not know how to sympathize with persons placed in situations of which we can have no experience, and, in the second place, when we are once familiarized with the violation of all truth and probability, we cannot easily admit that any thing the poet can tell us is sufficiently wonderful or surprising. If he gives us a giant a hundred feet high, we think we should have one of a thousand; if his hero can walk in the water, we want him also to fly in the air. The familiar use of prodigies, in short, makes us impatient of any ordinary

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occurrences; we will not submit to any difficulties or obstructions arising merely from the laws of nature, or the infirmity of human ture; and feel it as a sort of stinginess in the author, when he allows his favourites to be embarrassed for want of a miracle or an angel. After the abstract we have made of the story, it may seem very unreasonable to complain of Mr. Southey for not giving us enough of wonders; especially when it is considered, that, in order to oblige us, he has made one individual run up eight streets at the same moment of time, and actually accomplished the annihilation of space and time [p. 207] for the sake of another of his heroes. Unreasonable, however, as it may seem, we do think that, having gone so far, he ought to have gone still farther; and that his poem, considered only as a series of marvels, is greatly inferiour to many other works of much lower pretension. In variety and novelty of wonders, it is not to be compared with the Arabian Nights' Entertainments; and indi cates much less facility of invention than the Fairy Tales of the facetious count Hamilton.

Next to the fable, we should like to say a word or two of the diction and versification of this strange poem, before laying any specimens of it before our readers. The diction is copious, and flowing and varied, though always diffuse, often affected, and sometimes very provokingly debased by such babyisms as " dearest dear,"- -"maiden mine," and the other offensive blandishments of Mr. Southey's school. Of the versification, we can only say, that it is still more irregular than that of Thalaba; or, at least, that its irregularity is more conspicuous, by the capricious alternation of rhyme and blank verse, and the uncertain recurrence of the rhymes that are used. Regularity, we confess, appears to us to be of the very essence of versification; nor is it easy to give any other