"from a young girl of Galloway, who delighted in preserving the romantic legends of her country." He also tells us, that GOETHE has written a ballad of similar incidents, "which Madame de STAEL, in her cloquent work on Ger many, thus describes," &c. All this prodigious labour and research would have been spared to the author, if he had read the third volume of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, in which he would have found an ample collection of such stories-and he would also have found Dr. LEYDEN's exquisite ballad, which might have spared us the ennui which the thing now under examination has so liberally bestowed.

Of the merits of the execution, our readers will judge at least as favourably from our extracts as from the poem itself. We have quoted, at the commencement, the most la boured passage in the poem, and that which we believe to be the favourite of the author, and our readers may decide upon it. There is a good deal of tenderness and beauty in the stanzas entitled "Margaret," and in the "Tale" at page 48; but in the succeeding poem, and in that called The Fairies," we have a mere congregation of all the writer's faults and absurdities.

On the whole, we are of opinion that the style and matter of the poems now before us are like the blue, red, and yellow weeds which Lord Bacon speaks of, "which, though they be gay to look upon, yet hurt the corn;" and we heartily hope that, however the eyes of the public may be dazzled by their brilliancy, they will always check their growth, and the sale of the roots which produce them-and encourage in their stead the culture of those genuine plants, which, though their blossoms be not quite so gaudy, are far more enduring, and will produce fruits worthy of immortality.

ART. III.—Glenarvon. In Three volumes. London. 1816. THE most philosophical poet, and, for that reason, the most vivid Describer of the present day, has told us that 'Books are a real world, both pure and good,

'Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our virtue and our happiness may grow.'*

This is peculiarly true of works of fiction, although in the greater number of what are called our Standard No

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,

vels, the attainment of this high moral purpose is as little regarded as the distribution of poetical justice in English tragedy. Indeed the only examples which occur to our memory, in which this end has been kept in view, are the Tales of DEFOE, the Allegories of JonN BUNYAN, and the Novels of the heart-searching author of Clarissa. Who ever read the last divine work, and particularly that part of it which follows the relation of the outrage, and describes the gradual decay of the beautiful and high-souled maiden, and the operations of that faith which added to her pale features that heavenly expression-that touching charm, infinitely more inchanting than all the voluptuous graces which the gaiety of health, and the sunshine of prosperity can throw around the sleek favourites of fortune, without an ardent aspiration that his last end may be like hers, and a resolution to imitate her life?

The production now before us is of a character completely different but it does not entirely depend for its success upon the force and verisimilitude of its representations--but upon scandal, which is a principal ingredient of the charm which has wrought that success. The reputed author of the novel is said to have intended to delineate her acquaintance under the names of the interesting persons who figure in the workwe are not sure whether this is the case-but it certainly has given no small degree of amusement to the young ladies and gentlemen of the present day, to ascribe to various living characters attributes and actions which have been unknown in our Christian country, at least for the last four hundred years, and principles which we think could at any time only have existed in the hearts of outlandish pagans, or in the brains of modern romance-writers. This author, however, wishes to persuade us, that these things are quite common here--that domestic tragedies of every sort are acting every day unperceived by us under our eyes and has kindly unveiled to us a few of those secret proceedings in the novel of Glenarvon. We have there as many horrors as in any ten modern romances which we ever read-rebellion, adultery, seductions innumerable, murders, the midnight revels of assassins, broken hearts, and infanticide,-not to mention horrible dreams, prophecies of gipsey-women, storms, and dreadful stories told by old nurses, by way of entertainment. We shall not "toil our own brains," nor those of our readers,

* Preface to the Poems of S. T. Coleridge.
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No.XVIII.-VOL.III.--Aug. Rev.

by endeavouring to discover whether the persons of the drama are very like their imputed originals, or whether there exists any resemblance at all-and if we lose the praise of invention, we shall at least escape the fate of those laborious personages who have spent so much ink and so much of that subtler fluid usually called ingenuity, in allegorizing the Golden Ass of APULEIUS, and in referring the actors in the Argenis of BARCLAY to their imagined prototypes-and whose labours have been rewarded by the ridicule of all the rest of the world.

Lady Margaret Buchanan is a person who has devoted all her pains to become what Dr. Johnson called a policizer.— In the present story, she manoeuvres with the ability of a German princess to bring about a marriage between her son and the only descendant of the Duke of Altamonte, to whose estates she wishes him to succeed-but the scheme is baulked by the unlucky birth of a son. However, with the assistance of one of her lovers, this child is strangled-but the aforesaid marriage is broken off by the dislike of both parties to each other. At last the young lady is married to a certain Lord Avondale, with whom she has fallen deeply in love, and goes to spend the winter in London.-Here she sails on the full tide of folly and extravagance; but soon growing wearied of this life, she returns to Ireland. She there meets with Lord Glenarvon, who is one of the leaders of the rebellion in that country, and universally known to be so, but who is, notwithstanding all this, familiarly acquainted with the neighbouring noblemen and gentlemen, with some of whom he domesticates whenever it pleases him. He is represented as a person of great beauty, and as possessing great powers of seduction he is a poet, and he sings to admiration. This graceful and glorious Creature, however, has a heart as dark and malignant as a demon-and his pleasures are entirely sensual, except when he varies their intensity by the exenteration of those minds over whom his powers of fascination have been exerted. With this fallen angel-this Mephistophiles in human shape, Lady Avondale falls outrageously in love and at last runs away from her father's house to join bim.

:

The remainder of the novel relates the justice which has been supposed to pursue them-and the authoress has certainly made root and branch work with them all. It reminds us of the catastrophe of Tom Thumb, or of some of our old tragedies, where no one escapes. It turns out at

last, that the life of the son and heir of the Duke of Altamonte had been preserved and another infant throttled, who was so very like the young nobleman, that his father, aunt, and sister, and all their friends, firmly believed him to be that important person. The unhappy infant who suffered martyrdom for the sake of this new faith, was torn from the arms of his agonized mother at midnight by a familiar of Lord Glenarvon, who very properly considered that such trifling matters as a broken heart or two ought never to stand in the way of his pleasures.

Our readers will easily perceive, that this story is neither very new, nor very probable, nor very interesting. There is a great deal of what SWIFT calls lady-spelling, and a great deal of what every body calls absurdity. There are imitations of sundry modern authors-from LORD BYRON down to OSSIAN, or rather to MACPHERSON. The author has succeeded perfectly in her imitation of the last writer, and is at least equally extravagant and unintelligible. There is a constant straining at effect, which often fails in a most lamentable manner. Thus Calantha says to a person who accosts her, "If I had ever beheld you before, I could never have forgotten it." This is said on purpose to throw around the character an air of awful and impressive grandeur-and yet it turns out that this striking personage is no other than her own cousin, with whom all her early life had been passed! There are various defects in the management of the story. The preservation of the child's life, for example, was, in the predicament in which the authors of the scheme stood, an act of inconceivable folly-for if their object was to make another person heir to the estates, and infanticide was absolutely necessary, the son of the Duke of Altamonte might just as well have been strangled as Billy Kendal. In the first case, the agony of the loss would have been felt by the Duke alone-in the other, another family was driven to distraction, without removing any portion of the misery from the minds of the family of Altamonte. Besides, the boy's preservation was useless; because, if the contrivers of the plot intended at any future time to restore him to his rights, the object proposed to be gained by the scheme would have been lost-if they did not, his preservation was equally useless, for he could be of no service to his preservers, and his presence could only have excited suspicions, which they were by no means able to answer. These improbabilities are very glaring-but there are many indications of genius in the

work almost sufficient to redeem them. The progress of the guilty passion of Glenarvon and Calantha is painted with much force and feeling, though it occupies by far too much of the work. In the history of Alice, too, there is a good deal of pathos-though this part of the story reminded us rather too frequently of Mrs. OPIE'S "Father and Daughter." The meeting of Glenarvon and Zerbellini at midnight, is described in a manner which evidences that the author has some power over the tragic passion of terror. All these merits, however, are contrasted with no small proportion of the worst faults of the worst modern novels. The heroes and heroines all talk in the bombastic style which has so thoroughly sickened us for the last half century. Thus we have a constant recurrence of such phrases as "Let nor father nor husband," &c. &c., and the authoress makes an ostentatious exhibition of such classical learning as every boy of a common skull could display without making the ridiculous blunders which this lady has committed. The heroines, besides, are always introduced with soft music, of their own composition, or that of some kind friend who is luckily present. They are all "inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne," and to this unfortunate predilection for music we owe the misfortune of being forced to read the tame yet extravagant verses which are so profusely scattered through the book.

Upon the whole, though the work is not destitute of occasional gleams of tenderness and fancy, we think that it is not very likely to outlive the present generation of fine ladies and gentlemen-and that it will then sink into oblivion, (the charm of scandal being lost,) with the numerous' receipts to make whores,' which have now gone down, with their discoverers, to the tomb of all the Capulets.'

ART. IV.-Albyn's Anthology; or a select Collection of Melodies and Vocal Poetry peculiar to Scotland and the Isles. Collected and arranged by ALEXANDER CampBELL. The modern Scotish and English Verses written by WALTER SCOTT, Esq. and other living Poets of the

first eminence.

WE hail the appearance of this work with much pleasure,

--and we are afraid that it will be more difficult to keep