Shelley, in this performance, had nothing to do but literally adhere to the traditional narrative.

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Francisco Cenci, a rich Roman of the sixteenth century, passed his life in debauchery and all kinds of enormities; as often as justice, roused by the cry of a victim, bared the sword of punishment, he purchased impunity of Clement VIII. for 100,000 crowns. Enacting the part of executioner to his own family, he coolly conceived the design of incestuous, commerce with his own daughter Beatrice. Beatrice and her mother-in-law conspire to get their common tyrant assassinated; two bravos whom they have hired, shrink from the task at the moment of performance; and Beatrice in despair, herself consummates the fearful sacrifice. Papal justice, less indulgent to the daughter than the father, condemns her to suffer the death decreed to parricide. Beatrice was as amiable as she was beautiful; and the contrast produces an eminently tragic heroine.

The reader trembles and pauses at the idea of justifying or condemning such an action committed under the impulse of such motives, but no poetry can diminish the feeling of disgust occasioned by the detail of Cenci's wickedness. An irresistible curiosity, notwithstanding, engages us in the development of those Italian characters of the sixteenth century, skilfully invested by Shelley with that superstition which combined with all their sensations. Thus Cenci, the father, dedicated within his palace walls, a chapel to St.

Thomas, and caused masses to be said for the repose of his soul; and in the same manner his wife and daughter are profoundly occupied, with the desire of making him confess before his assassination. I suppress the details; it is reported that the representation of the Eumenides of Euripides caused the abortion of the pregnant Athenian women who witnessed the representation.

Of all Shelley's poems, one only has been proscribed by the law courts; it is that, from supplying the notes to which, Byron defends himself while he eulogises the brilliancy of its colouring. Queen Mab is clandestinely sold, and it was not without difficulty that I was enabled to procure a copy. I have never felt much dread of the sophistries of an atheism which borrows its incorporation from poetry; such poetry, in itself, supplies a refutation of its most specious principles. The muse must have both a worship and a belief. Shelley calls his unknown God, universal love he is the same as my own, since he invests him with attributes, without which, I am unable to conceive the being whom I adore. The notes of Queen Mab are more hostile to Christianity than the poem; but they are, after all, nothing more than quotations from the philosophism of the age of Louis XV. They might be taken for a little collection of notes, written by a student in law or medicine, of one year's standing, who, on quitting college, has culled from Voltaire and other antireligious writers, five or six common-places, in order to act the part of a freethinker in society, till some

female wit, interesting herself for his youth, tell him in a whisper, that he is no more than a philosophical parrot; or, till he be induced to peruse the Savoyard Vicar's creed, and so read himself again into the possession of religious feeling.

The plot of Queen Mab is as follows :-A young female (Ianthe) is peaceably sleeping, while her lover (Henry) takes advantage of her sleep to admire her recumbent beauty. The Queen of the Fairies, who represents imagination, descends in her aërial car, and reveals to Ianthe the past, the present, and the future.

The soul of the mortal thus favoured by Titania, ascends the car of the latter, and with her traverses the immensity of worlds, in order to arrive at the palace of the Queen of Enchantment. The fairy conducts Ianthe to a rampart, whence they contemplate all the spheres of the universe, among which our earth appears reduced to the size of a scarcely visible speck.

The fairy describes the ruins of antient ages; the birth and fall of empires; she then reviews existing things, and the systems of human arrogance, attacking all creeds, turning all worships into vain mummeries, and converting all divinities into phantoms, which vanish at the touch of her wand, as the illusions of Amida's palace disappear before the radiance of Renaud's divine shield. Resorting to an eccentric fiction, the poet invokes the wandering Jew to appear, and once more curse the tyranny of that deity, to whom he formerly

denied his pity. This is introducing one phantom to fight against another. Nor is this contradiction the only one which leaves the reader in the dark, as to the precise drift of the poet's intentions. As soon as all the dreams of popular beliefs are disposed of, the fairy explains the nature of the future, destined to fill that immense void, which, divested of all belief, is sufficient to terrify human imagination. There will no longer exist an almighty Creator: but universal love will preside over creation. All the enjoyments of the golden age, Olympus, terrestrial paradise, and christian heaven, will then be the reward of virtue. But in what is this said virtue to consist? I suppose the poet by virtue means the condition of a man in a state of nature; that is to say, a new obscurity. But it is after all no more than a dream, which Ianthe may probably relate when she awakes.

Grand and sublime imagery, energetic sentiments, all the enthusiasm of mysticism, and some poetical declamation completes the essence of Queen Mab, the style of which is distinguished by brilliancy and harmony, but is more emphatic than precise. I shall not say what a mathematician said of the verses of Racine. "What does it all prove?" Queen Mab proves that Shelley was a poet betimes, and that he deserved the eulogium of Byron; and fortunately it proves nothing against any religion whatever. I say fortunately, for I am somewhat inclined to agree with the worthy Brahmin, who was so unhappy in discover

ing that Brahma had enjoined him an impossible creed. In order to demonstrate to him that the Brahmins ate living creatures, like the Europeans, an Englishman brought an optical instrument from Europe, by the aid of which, the Indian beheld a number of animalcules moving and living in the vegetable diet on which he usually fed. "You are in the right," he said, to the Englishman; but after a few days, the latter beheld him returning pale and pensive, and requesting as a favor the loan of his precious microscope. The Englishman made him a present of it; and the Indian taking it, broke it to pieces against a stone. "Since that accursed crystal," said he, "has deprived me of the composure of my belief, I have been miserable; and I hope to prevent, by breaking it, its teaching so cruel a truth to my countrymen."

Alas! how many less serious illusions are there, the loss of which, during the course of our existence, supplies a source of bitter regret!

If in a work entitled a Tour, it were not time to interrupt this disquisition on poetry, in order to travel a little, I would devote this place to an analysis of some other contemporary poets, and in so doing, I should not omit enumerating some female authors, who are not blue-stockings like Lady Morgan. I hope to have an opportunity of making a few remarks on Mrs. Helen Williams, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Opie, young Miss Landon, theDelpine Gai," of London, &c. I would not indeed so soon abandon the subject of poetry,