"many of these very stories of the Jews, decline and fall of the drunken man, marking the whole progress from the first incipient hesitation of reason to the glorious confusion of ideas in the highest state of elevation, thence through all the declining cases of stupified paralytic ineptitude, down to the horizontal condition of preterpluperfect ebriety. p. 245. What this sentence is intended for we cannot tell. "To the French spirit of intrigue and gallantry she joined Irish acuteness and Irish varieties of odd resource." Vol. 2. p. 16. These are few only of the blemishes which struck us on a cursory perusal. Some of them are perhaps errors of the press. We are always willing to make a liberal allowance on that score. Indeed we ought to do so in this case, as we have Mr. Edgeworth's assurance that his daughter' does not write negligently.' E. ART. 3. The Lament of Tasso. By Lord Byron. New-York. Van Winkle & Wiley. 12mo. pp. 23. Fit be any alleviation to vent one's grief amiable and estimable wife-without in sighs groans, we know the his separation more likely to exhale his sorrows than lord Byron. It is certain, at least, that his lordship will soon exhaust his readers' sympathies, if not his own tears. This 'Lament' indeed, is by no means so loud, nor so deep drawn, as some of his moans. It may be considered, comparatively, a very feeble whine. We are aware that we are thought very hard hearted, by some persons, because we do not enter, with a livelier interest, into his lordship's sufferings. It is not that we have no pity for distress, but that this sentiment is drowned in indignation. We will leave it to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, out of their pure philanthropy and disinterested benevolence, to pat the back of the spoil'd 'Childe,' lest he should unhappily choke with his own gall. For our own part, we will confess that we consider such a stomachy chap much more deserving of the rod, than of a sugar sop. His lordship makes a great parade about sentiment and sensibility; but we must be excused for doubting the chariness and delicacy of that man's affections, who has so little reserve in his expressions upon the tenderest points, and who has no selection in his auditors. Without inquiring into the merits of his domestic quarrels-though, unless his lordship be cruelly belied, he has conJacted with gross brutality towards an from an object for whom he felt, or feigned, the most violent passion-we will say that we have never seen anything more despicable and unmanly, than his lordship's direct and indirect attacks upon this deserted and defenceless woman. For a man who is capable of such base and ungenerous treatment of a confiding female, whose love he has solicited, whose caresses he has enjoyed, and whom he is bound in law and in honour to foster and protect-for such a man to pretend to a refinement and elevation of soul, that set him above the comprehension of vulgar minds, is an insult to common sense and common feeling. That lord Byron should have the uparalleled audacity, under such circumstances, to challenge condolence, is almost incredible,—that he should obtain it, is a disgrace to the understanding and virtue of the age! We assume not to be rigid censors, we are not inclined to pry into any man's private history, or to expose his secret obliquities-but we are shocked and outraged by the barefaced presumption that can ground complaints on its own wrongs. If we could ever lose sight of his lordship in his poetry,—if we were ever permitted to forget the author, and to overlook the personal application of the sentiment, we might enjoy, occasionally, much delight in his lordship's writings. But when, in the midst of his pathos, we recollect his character, we are disgusted with his affectation. When he makes the pretence of paternal kindness for his infant daughter, a cloak beneath which to stab afresh the bleeding bosom of that infant's mother, we are the more revolted at the atrocity of the act from the sanctity of the disguise. In listening to his invocations of solitude and silence, we are led to reflect on the causes which have rendered him an outcast from society. When we hear him arraigning Heaven, and uttering imprecations on mankind, we cannot but call to remembrance his heinous ingratitude to the one, and his manifold injuries to the other. Many of his sentiments, it is true, harmonize with his condition. But these are not of the class which we admire. we We are anxious to be distinctly understood in regard to the nature of the impressions we are apt to receive from his lordship's most applauded and intrinsically finest passages. The more should approve them as truths, the more we abhor them as lies. When lord Byron murmurs in the impassioned and desponding tones of Petrarch, or Camoens, or Tasso, we are affected much in the same manner that we should be by the language of Cato in the mouth of Clodius. We must be persuaded of the sincerity of an orator, or of a poet, before we can yield ourselves up to his power. Mere rhetorical declamation, Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart. But when we perceive the absolute mendacity of the speaker, when his tongue is contradicted by the whole tenor of his life, we are more struck by the effrontery of the falsehood, than with the beauty of the sentiment. Lord Byron has so impoliticly appropriated to himself prominent sentiments, expressed in the persons of his heroes, that we are perhaps induced to extend the parallel of their situations and opinions further than his lordship intended. Thus, this injudicious association of himself with the creatures of his fancy, besides robbing us of the pleasure we might have derived from a temporary oblivion of his actual profligacy, has filled our apprehensions with the spectres of unperpetrated crimes. We sincerely regret the double injustice which his lordship has by this means committed. We have made the above remarks in reference to lord Byron's past productions and the judgment we have pronounced upon them. In his present performance there is little to excite reprehension, or indeed any thing else. It is altogether unworthy of his lordship's reputation, and only remarkable as it affords another evidence of that incontinence in his lordship which we have so often reproved. If the noble author desire posthumous fame, he should treasure up a legacy for posterity. Indeed if he would not survive his celebrity, he must be more prudent in his demands on a complaisant public. We suspect, however, that the Lament of Tasso,' like Peter Pindar's razors, was made to sell.' Notwithstanding his lordship's youthful deprecation of mercenary motives, he has of late found it exceedingly convenient to replenish his empty coffers by vending 'the lumber of the brain'-and, we believe, has discovered it to be a gainful trade. But we did not thinkt hat after his vehement phillippic against this contraband traffic, he would SO soon have taken to peddling small wares. What price his lordship may have received for this 'copy of verses' we know not-five hundred pounds perhaps-but be that as it may, we will give it to our readers gratis-nor shall we require many thanks for the donation. It may be well, however, to explain the circumstance on which it is founded. Tasso was patronized at an early age, by Alphonso Duke of Ferrara. He produced his poem of Rinaldo, at Padua, when he was but seventeen years old, and four years after placed himself under the protection of this prince. Alphonso procured him an employment in the suite of his brother, a Cardinal and ambassador from the Pope to the court of France. On his return to Ferrara the young poet suffered himself to become enamoured of Elenora, the sister of his sovereign. He struggled with his passion and retired to Sorrento in Naples, his native place, where his sister resided. But absence served only to inflame his passion. Unable longer to deny himself the pleasure of seeing his mistress, he returned to Ferrara, and such was the uncontrollable force of his love, that he had the rashness to embrace the princess in a crowded assembly. The Duke Alphonso, who witnessed his extravagance, coolly ordered him to be confined as a maniac in the hospital of St. Anne. Here for twenty years he suffered all that his own sensibility, and the scenes around him, could inflict. It is not wonderful that he should, at times, have experienced the malady imputeď to him. He was eventually released and retired to Naples THE LAMENT OF TASSO. 1. Long years!-it tries the thrilling frame to bear II. But this is o'er-my pleasant task is done :- none. But thou, my young creation! my soul's child! Nor cause for such; they called me mad-and why? Oh Leonora! wilt not thou reply? But still my frenzy was not of the mind; But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore. III. Above me hark! the long and maniac cry With these and with their victims am I classed, 'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close: So let it be-for then I shall repose. Nor words a language, nor e'en men mankind; None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all, V. Look on a love which knows not to despair, The vivid thought still flashes through my frame, Were punished by the silentness of thine, VI. It is not marvel-from my very birth My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade wo, Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers, And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise, Where I did lay me down within the shade Of waving trees, and dreamed uncounted hours, Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said Of such materials wretched men were made, And such a truant boy would end And that the only lesson was a blow; And then they smote me, and I did not weep, But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt Returned and wept alone, and dreamed again The visions which arise without a sleep. And with my years my soul began to pant With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain; And the whole heart exhaled into One Want, But undefined and wandering, till the day I found the thing I sought-and that was thee; And then I lost my being all to be Absorbed in thine-the world was past away-Thou didst annihilate the earth to me! VII. I loved all solitude-but little thought What though he perish, he may lift his eye VIII. Yet do I feel at times my mind decline, But with a sense of its decay:-1 see Unwonted lights along my prison shine, And a strange demon, who is vexing me I once was quick in feeling--that is o'er- Stamp madness deep into my memory, A poet's wreath shall be thine only crown, walls! And thou, Leonora! thou-who wert ashamed towers And battlements which guard his joyous hours Of magic round thee is extinct-shalt have This is all! Here is the whole of lord Byron's book, called the 'Lament of Tasso.' We have given his lordship at full length, and we hope we are duly obliged to him for the opportunity he has afforded us of gratifying our numerous readers with an entire volume of new poetry, of the newest pattern. How very condescending it is in great lords to write such little books ! Who would have expected a work like this from 'the greatest poet' of the age! We are sorry, however, that his lordship did not bear in mind, that 'whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well.' Indeed the less costly the material, the more requisite is skill in the workmanship to give it value. But we do not discover any unusual polish in this poem. It is written in the same rugged style as his lordship's masterpieces. It is a rough-hewn pebble. We have often a great deal of trouble to make out a very little meaning. The whole of the first stanza is constructed with the most curious infelicity.' The sense is discoverable on close scrutiny, but the periods are cumbrous, and to say the least, very awkwardly arranged. The rhymes do not regularly recur, nor are they perfect-grate and shade, display'd and gate will not harmonize. The figures are bad. We are told of a 'grate' working through the eyeball to the brain, with a hot sense of heaviness and pain'--that is a 'grate,' with a 'hot sense, working its way through the eye-ball!' There is to be sure, no incongruity in endowing a grate with sense that could perform such feats, though we think it a very nonsensical metaphor. We are next told of a never opening gate which admits nothing through its bars, but day and tasteless food-and the scoffings of captivity. The figurative and 6 6 literal expressions are not well coupled. We next find that this 'tasteless food' once had an 'unsocial bitterness' which it had lost. This is intelligible. But how a man or 'a beast of prey' can ‘banquet' upon 'tasteless food, we cannot easily comprehend. It is allowable to suppose that Tasso planned his Jeruselem Delivered during his tedious confinement, and it would be natural for him to feel some listlessness, and something like regret, after he had completed so pleasing a task--but that finishing his work was to him like the 'last bruise upon a broken reed,' as we learn in the second stanza, we could not have imagined. In the sixth stanza there is some poetry, though there is nothing new in it to the readers of lord Byron. By his own account, the author of the Lamentation was a sad boy. When he was whipped as a truant, he 'cursed in his heart,' his parents or preceptors who inflicted the blow, and, regardless of their injunctions, returned to his favourite 'haunts.' He perused the volume of nature to little purpose, if he did not learn from his studies a better lesson of moral duty, than to nurture revenge and to persevere in disobedience. The poem contains his lordship's usual proportion of pause—antithesis-and alliteration. With pilfering pranks and petty pains— is a vastly pretty specimen of the latter. E. ART. 4. A Manual of Botany for the Northern States, comprising generic descrip tions of all Phenogamous and Cryptogamous plants to the north of Virginia, hitherto described, &c. &c. Compiled by the Editor of Richards's Botanical Dictionary. Albany. WEBSTER & SKINNERS. 1817. 12mo. pp. 164. THE THE work before us, has no higher claim than to the title of a mere compilation; but compilations are sometimes very useful when properly and skilfully executed, and this manual professing utility as its avowed object, it may be incumbent to examine how far this disideratum has been attained. It is ushered under the patronage of the members of the Botanical Class in Williams' College, Massachusetts, for whose use it appears to have been compiled, and whose thanks are offered to the author for his pains. While it must be highly gratifying to observe that as many as sixty-three students have signed that address, and attended the lectures on mineralogy and botany, delivered by the author in that College, and while they express their gra titude towards him in terms highly commendable, it may be proper to hint, that students are not in general the best judges of what is most useful in their pursuits. What they deem such, may often prove otherwise, and they are but seldom enabled to detect the errors of their teachers, while they are taught to consider them as doctrines and truths. How much better it would be, if those writers who undertake at an early period to instruct us, or to facilitate our attainments in natural sciences, would consult previously those who may be able and willing to guide their forward steps, and direct them towards the best sources of information. We are induced to state this, in reference to both works of this author, who appears to be a young man of |