tire," &c.

P 10.

"Fled composure's intellectual ray," &c. ib.
"When fate had reft his mutual heart,"
&c.
p. 11.

We honestly ask our readers what
sense, what meaning, they do or can
attach to the words, in the above
lines, which are in italics? And let
them not think the question useless.
Any line of any poet that requires to
be read twice over, (by his contempo-
absies) in order to be understood,
Frot never to have been written:
an auti after four times reading, no
added dit. can be found, it may teach
second appe deluded by a gawdy pro
yet it by no Juage, which soothes the
second appe filling the mind.
compar following stanza exhibits a
his ng instance of "words! words!
hoords!" as Hamlet says:

I boast no song in magic wonders rife,

But yet familiar, is there nought to prize;

Oh Nature! in hy bosom scenes of life?
And dwells in day-light truth's salubrious

skies

The parted ringlet shone in simplest guise,
An inmate in the home of Albert smil'd,
Or blest his noonday walk-she was his
only child."
P. 11.

No one, we believe, can perceive any connection between the first and last parts of this stanza: the expression day-light truth's salubrious skies is, to us, unintelligible nonsense; and the lame and impotent conclusion she was his only child reminds us of the parody of Colley Cibber of two lines of Pope:

Persuasion waits upon him when he talks,
And he has lodgings in the King's Bench

Walks.

We will not stop to censure his introduction of obsolete words, for perhaps Mr. Campbell thought himself authorised to do this, having adopted a stanza which is usually

and Mr. Campbell sometimes uses it
as such, as the following lines will tes
tify:-

So finish'd he the rime (howe'er uncash)
That true to nature's fervid feeling ras
(And song is but the eloquence of truth,

P. 25.

Yet so becomingly the expression past, That each succeeding look was lovelier than the last.

The "sunrise path," p. 80, for the eastern path, and the "sunrise" (ib.) for the eastern part of the globe, are quaint and fantastical expressions. But Mr. Campbell seems to think, with the gentleman in Moliere, that

Tout ce que n'est point prose est vers. Similar to the above is the phrase "reading hours," p. 32, meaning, we suppose, hours devoted to reading.

We seriously intreat our readers to peruse, and re-peruse, the following stanza, with all the attention they can bestow, and with all the sagacity they may happen to possess: and if, at the conclusion of their labour, they can honestly say, "I understand it," we request them to publish the discovery for the benefit of less acute intellects:

"But high, in amphitheatre above,
His arms the everlasting alloes threw :
Breath'd but an air of heaven, and all the

grove

As if with instinct living spirit grew,
Rolling its verdant gulphs of every hue;
And now suspended was the pleasing din,
Now from a murmur faint it swell'd anew,
Like the first note of organ heard within
Cathedral aisles,-ere yet its symphony
begin."

In the succeeding stanza we are told that Gertrude would "charm the ding'ring moon" with reading to herself! American moons must be of a different nature to our London moons; for we doubt whether Madam Luna would be stopped in her course by a whole legion of ladies, assembled in Kensington Gardens, and reading with unheard-of avidity. The book that Gertrude had was Shakspeare; and as it was by moonlight that she read, we presume it was Boydell's edi

tion of him.

site

Than odours cast on heav'n's own shrineto please

Give me thy love, than luxury more sweet,
And more than all the wealth that loads the
breeze,

When Coromandel's ships return from
Indian seas.'

"Then would that home admit them-hap-
pier far

Than grandeur's most magnificent saloon➡➡

While, here and there, a solitary star
Flush'd in the dark'ning firmament of June;
And silence brought the soul-felt hour, full
soon,

Ineffable, which I may not pourtray;
For never did the Hymenean moon
A paradise of hearts more sacred sway,
In all that slept beneath her soft voluptuous
ray."

The declaration of the lover is cold

and unnatural, and the sixth line is most lamentably eked out with to please, not having, as far as we can discover, (and we always speak diffidently of ourselves, because Mr. dream not of) the smallest connecCampbell may have meanings that we tion with the rest of the stanza. But what will our readers say, when we inform them that the next stanza is really meant to convey the informa tion, that Gertrude and her lover were married? It is a fact, however; and not a word more is said upon the subThis diminutive is unknown in the ject than what is contained in that English language; and if such crea- stanza. But we boldly (here we lay tions are to be sanctioned, why not aside our diffidence) defy any person have headlet, footlet, handlet, and to discover thus much by the mere noselet? We shall be overrun with interpretation of the stanza itself. these inventions of momentary convenience. Surely the language that was copious enough for Shakspeare and Milton, may well suffice for the mbodying Mr. Campbell's ideas.

"Winglet of the fairy humming bird." p. 34.

Such is the absurd obscurity of Mr. Campbell's poetry; and such is his vitiated taste. We will observe here, once for all, that we never have, and we hope we never shall again, read a

poem which so completely defied all power of understanding: sometimes we guessed a meaning, and sometimes we tortured one out: the words indeed were English, but their combination was of no language. It is the first time our mother tongue ever cost us so much trouble since we began our Horn book. Mr. Campbell may flatter himself into a belief that his poetry is good in proportion as it is unintelligible: but if he would be converted from his error, let him open a page of Milton, Dryden, Pope, Akenside, Goldsmith, and observe with what an admirable art the sense flows with the words. We may pause to dwell upon their beauties; we may read over again to renew our delight: but we never have occasion to do it to unravel and untwist their meaning from a harsh perplexity of words. Perspicuity is the great merit of all writing, for without it the chief end of literary labour is unobtained. But Mr. Campbell's Gertrude will be read, and will not be understood, for "nomeaning, puzzles more than wit." If he always understands himself, he is a lucky man.

"Desolate he look'd and famish`d poor."

p. 53.

These two epithets thus conjoined convey no very distinct image to the

mind.

At p. 55, we noticed the following grammatical error, but we believe it to be the only one in the poem: "But if the weight of fifteen years despair, And age hath bow'd me and the tort'ring foe," &c.

much; but if we did, we could not
testify it. It is impossible indeed
that a writer of Mr. Campbell's genius
(for genius he undoubtedly possesses)
can fail sometimes to be excellent: it
is impossible that the author of the
Pleasures of Hope can write uniformly
dull. Yet Gertrude is far, very far,
from being what might be expected
from his pen. It has a few felicitous
passages, and but a few. The first we
met with was the following:-
"Our virgins fed her with their kindly

bowls

Of fever-balm, and sweet sagamite
But she was journeying to the land of souls,
And lifted up her dying head to pray
That we should bid an ancient friend conver
Her orphan to his home of England's sha
And take, she said, this token far away
To one that will remember us of yore,
When he beholds the ring that Walde

grave's Julia wore.”

O! si sic omnia! There is great melody in the flow of these lines, and had the whole poem been so laboured, there would have been little room for censure. Unlike the preceding stan zas which we have quoted, the sense, here, is in unison with the words; and there needs no pondering to d vine what possible meaning can be couched beneath the expressions.— The following stanza presents an admirable picture of a haughty, selfdependent savage:

"He said-and strain'd unto his heart th
boy :

Far differently the mute Oneyda took
His calumet of peace and cup of joy;
A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook:
As monumental bronze unchanged his look:

Train'd, from his tree-rock'd cradle to his
bier,

tear."

We have said that the nature of the stanza adopted by Mr. Campbell ne- The fierce extremes of good and ill to breck cessarily forced him upon the use of Impassive-fearing but the shame of fearwords, for the sake of rime, which he A stoic of the woods-a man without a otherwise would not have employed. Instances of the truth of this may be found at p. 55, where Oncyda clasps Henry to his soul: and at p. 65, Gertrude clasps her husband" to her zone," a cold and exceptionable term; but then it rimed with own, thrown, and alone, in the same stanza. Many similar instances may be found scattered throughout the poem.

Our readers, by this time, will begin to ask, what is there of good in this work to counterbalance such a weight of bad? We wish we could answer,

In the second part, we do not meet with a single stanza that seems to us worthy of transcription: but in the third, (which is the last) there are several that bear upon them the ge nuine impress of Mr. Campbell's pow erful imagination. The following will please every reader, except perhaps a political one:

"And in the visions of romantic youth,
What years of endless bliss are yet to flow
But mortal pleasure, what art thou in truth!
The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below!

And must I change my song? and must I show,

Sweet Wyoming! the day, when thou wert doom'd,

Guiltless, to mourn thy loveliest bow'rs laid low!

When where of yesterday a garden bloom'd, Death overspread his pall, and black'ning ashes gloom'd.

"Sad was the year, by proud oppression
driv'n,

When Transatlantic Liberty arose,
Not in the sunshine, and the smile of
heav'n,

But wrapt in whirlwinds, and begirt with

woes:

Amidst the strife of fratricidal foes,

Her birth star was the light of burning plains;

Her baptism is the weight of blood that flows From kindred hearts-the blood of British veins

"Half could I bear, methinks, to leave this earth,

And thee, more lov'd, than aught beneath
the sun,

If I had liv'd to smile but on the birth
Of one dear pledge;-but shall there then
be none,

In future times no gentle little one,
To clasp thy neck, and look, resembling me!
A sweetness in the cup of death to be,
Yet seems it, ev'n while life's last pulses run,
Lord of my bosom's love! to die beholding
thee!"

After these and a description of
Henry's distraction for the loss of his
wife, the poem concludes with the
death song of the Indian chief, Oneyda,
in a lyrical measure.
In this song

ral. Addressing himself to Henry, he there is one passage extremely natuasks,

And famine tracks her steps, and pestilen. "Seek we thy once lov'd home?

tial pains."

We will venture upon one more
extract, than which there is not a
finer passage
in the whole volume. It
is the dying address of Gertrude to
her husband; and it is, in every re-
spect, worthy of the muse of Mr.
Campbell:-

"Clasp me a little longer, on the brink
Of fate! while I can feel thy drear caress;
And, when this heart hath ceas'd to beat-
oh! think,

And let it mitigate thy woe's excess,
That thou hast been to me all tenderness,
And friend to more than human friendship

just.

Oh! by that retrospect of happiness,
And by the hopes of an immortal trust,
God shall assuage thy pangs-when I am

laid in dust!

The hand is gone that cropt its flowers!
Unheard their clock repeats its hours!→
Cold is the hearth within their bowers!--
And should we thither roam,
Its echoes and its empty tread
Would sound like voices from the dead!”

Such is the poem of Gertrude of Wyoming, and if, in expressing our opinion of it, we have been led-to estimation of some, it may deserve, adopt a harsher manner than, in the we can only say, that we have written as we think; and that had it been the production of any other pen than Mr. Campbell's, we should have dismissed

it with more indifference from our notice. But we are among the admirers of his former work, and we were astonished and sorry to see him sink so much below himself in his present one. Let us hope that he may redeem what he now loses in reputation by some future effort which shall be at least equal to his Pleasures of Hope.

There are some smaller pieces in the volume, of considerable merit, if we except "The Mariners of England" and the "Battle of the Baltic," both of which are written with an affectation of singularity, which must always displease a mind that can duly relish the chaster effusions of the muse. Yet, even through the ungraceful vestments in which Mr. Campbell chooses to attire his thoughts, the beauty of the thoughts themselves will be evident. Thus we cannot but admire the following lines in the Mariners of England :

ORIGINAL POETRY.