dal, who, on witnessing such brutality, would not lend a foot to kick him down stairs, and a hand to fling him into the moat among the barbels. As for the diction, it is equally destitute of grace and power-and not only without any colouring of beauty, but all blotch and varnish, laid on as with a shoe-brush. All sorts of images and figures of speech crawl over the surface of the Sequel, each shifting for itself, like certain animalculæ set a-racing on a hot-plate by a flaxen-headed cowboy; and though there are some hundreds of them, not one is the property of Mr Tupper, but liable to be claimed by every versifier from Cockaigne to Cape Wrath. Let us turn, then, to his ambitious and elaborate address to Imagination, and see if it conspicuously exhibit the qualities of the poetical character. "Thou fair enchantress of my willing heart, Or quaking sands of untried theory, That wind a dubious pathway through the deep,- Have I not often sat with thee retired, Alone yet not alone, though grave most glad, As from the distant hum of many waters, Imagination is here hailed first as a "fair enchantress," then as a "lovely siren," and then as the poet's mother "I am thine own child." In the next paragraph-not quoted-she is called "angelic visitant;" again he says, "me thy son;" immediately af ter, "indulgent lover, I am all thine own;" and then "Imagination, art thou not my friend, As the coy village maiden's " rather ridiculous-with Imagination sitting by his side, and whispering soft nothings into his ear. 66 "With still small voice" is too hal- Or quaking sands of untried theory, We do not believe that these lines have "The intellectual power through words and things Went sounding on its dim and perilous Imagination is then "Triumphant "Because thy secret heart, Is all on flame, a censer filled with odours, Suggesting passive terrors and delights, Here the heart of Imagination is—if we rightly understand it—the burning bush spoken of in the Old Testament "Thy dark cheek, Warm and transparent, by its half-formed dimple The coral groves: thy broad and sunny brow, The Muses, and the Passions, and Young Love, That leads to the high dome where Learning sits: Flame-coloured pinions, streaked with gold and blue, Here and there we meet with a rather goodish line-as for example— "Thou hast wreathed me smiles, Screened from the north by groves of And hung them on a statue's marble lips," will admire this too You admire it?-then probably you And again "Hast made earth's dullest pebbles bright like gems." And still better, perhaps "Hast lengthened out my nights with lifelong dreams." We are willing, but scarcely able, to be pleased with the following image: "First feelings, and young hopes, and better aims, And sensibilities of delicate sort, kill, From my heart's garden; for they stood retired, "As the wild chamois bounds from rock to rock, Shot up ten thousand feet and crystallized When earth was labouring with her kraken brood; 1 So have I sped with thee, my bright-eyed love, Bounding from thought to thought, unmindful of As it floats in a frothing heap; We daresay there are moles and weasels among the Alps, but one does not think of them there; and had Mr Tupper ever taken up a weasel by the tail, between his finger and thumb, he would not, we are persuaded, have conceived it possible that any Elf, accustomed to live during summer in the froth of a cataract, could have been "so far left to himself" as to have sought winter lodgings with an animal of such an intolerable stink. And what are the Alpine Elf's pursuits? "I ride for a freak on the lightning streak, And mingle among the cloud, My swarthy form with the thunder-storm, Wrapp'd in its sable shroud." A very small thunder storm indeed would suffice to wrap his Elf-ship in its sable shroud; but is he not too magniloquent for a chum of the mole and the weasel ? What would be the astonishment of the mole to see his bed-fellow as follows "Often I launch the huge avalanche, And make it my milk-white sledge, When unappalled to the Grindle wald I slide from the Shrikehorn's edge." By his own account he cannot be much more than a span long-and we are sceptical as to his ability to launch an avalanche, though we are aware that avalanches hold their places by a precarious tenure. However, the sight of so minute a gentleman sliding unappalled on a huge avalanche from the Grindlewald to the Shrikeborn's edge, would be of itself worth a journey to Switzerland. But what a cruel little wretch it is! not satisfied with pushing the ibex over the precipice, he does not scruple to avow, "That my greatest joy is to lure and decoy To the chasm's slippery brink, The hunter bold, when he's weary and old, And there let him suddenly sink A thousand feet-dead!-he dropped like lead, Ha! he couldn't leap like me; sport, one would think, to an Alpine "And there mid his bones, that echoed with groans, I make me a nest of his hair; The ribs dry and white rattle loud as in spite, When I rock in my cradle there : Hurrah, hurrah, and ha, ha, ha! I'm in a merry mood, For I'm all alone in my palace of bone, That's tapestried fair with the old man's hair, And dappled with clots of blood." At what season of the year? During summer his home is in a "frothing heat;" during winter he sleeps with the weasel or moudy-warp. It must be in spring or autumn that he makes his nest in a dead man's hair. How imaginative ! Turn we now to a reality, and see how Mr Tupper, who likened himself to a chamois, deals with a chamoishunter. He describes one scaling "Catton's battlement" before the peep of day, and now at its summit. "Over the top, as he knew well, "And now he scans the chasmed ice; He stoops to leap, and in a trice His foot hath slipp'd,-O heaven! He hath leapt in, and down he falls Between those blue tremendous walls, Standing asunder riven. "But quick his clutching nervous grasp Contrives a jutting crag to clasp, And thus he hangs in air;O moment of exulting bliss! Yet hope so nearly hopeless is Twin brother to despair. "He look'd beneath,- -a horrible doom! "Fifteen long dreadful hours he hung, And often by strong breezes swung His fainting body twists, Scarce can he cling one moment more, His half-dead hands are ice, and sore His burning bursting wrists. "His head grows dizzy,-he must drop, "He thought what fear it were to fall Into the pit that swallows all, Unwing'd with hope and love; And when the succour came at last, O then he learnt how firm and fast Was his best Friend above." That is much better than any thing yet quoted, and cannot be read without a certain painful interest. But the composition is very poor. "O heaven! He hath leapt in !" Well-what then?" and down he falls!" Indeed! We do not object to "between those blue tremendous walls," but why tell us they were "standing asunder riven?" We knew he had been on the edge of the "chasmed ice." "O moment of exulting bliss!" No-no-no. “Many a rood"-perpendicular altitude is never measured by roods nor yet by perches. Satan "lay floating many a rood"-but no mention of roods when "his stature reached the sky.” “His head grows dizzy"—aye that it did long before the fifteen hours had expired. "But stop, O stop" is, we fear, laughable-yet we do not laugh -for 'tis no laughing matter-and 66 never in life give up your hope" is at so very particular a juncture too general an injunction. "Be cool, man, hold on fast" is a leetle too much, addressed to poor Pierre, whose "half dead hands were ice," and who had been hanging on by them for fifteen hours. "And so from out that terrible place, With death's pale paint upon his face, They drew him up at last" is either very good or very bad—and we refer it to Wordsworth. The con "They call thee, Pierre,-see, see them cluding stanzas are tame in the ex here, Thy gathered neighbours far and near, "And he came home an altered man, For many harrowing terrors ran Through his poor heart that day; He thought how all through life, though young, Upon a thread, a hair, he hung, Over a gulf midway: treme; "For many harrowing terrors ran Through his poor heart that day!" We can easily believe it; but never after such a rescue was there so feeble an expression from poet's heart of religious gratitude in the soul of a sinner saved. The African Desert" and "The Suttees" look like Oxford Unprized Poems. The Caravan, after suffering the deceit of the mirage, a-dust are aware of a well. "Hope smiles again, as with instinctive haste And snuff the grateful breeze, that sweeping by What There is no thirst here-our palate grows not dry as we read. passion is there in saying that the camels rushed along the waste, "Swift as the steed that feels the slackened rein," could much mend it; but some of the most agreeable men we know labour under it, and we suspect owe to it no inconsiderable part of their power in conversation. People listen to their impeded prosing more courteously, And flies impetuous o'er the sounding and more attentively, than to the prate plain ?" "Not a bit." And still worse is "That bow of hope upon a stormy sky!!!" “In silent rapture gaze upon the scene!!!" And then he absolutely paints it! not in water colours-but in chalks. Graceful arms of palms-tangled hair of acacia-scarlet tassels of kossoms in festoons-and the jewels of promise of the flowering colocynth!!! Stammering or stuttering, certainly is an unpleasant defect-or weakness in the power of articulation or speech, and we don't believe that Dr Browster VOL. XLIV. NO. CCLXXVIII, of those "whose sweet course is not hindered;" and thus encouraged, they grow more and more loquacious in their vivacity, till they fairly take the lead in argument or anecdote, and are the delight and instruction of the evening, as it may hap, in literature, philosoThen, a scandalous phy, or politics. story, stuttered or stammered, is irresistible every point tells-and blunt indeed, as the head of a pin, must be that repartee that extricates not itself with a jerk from the tongue-tied, sharp as the point of a needle. We beg to assure Mr Tupper, that his sympathy with the "Stammerer," would extort from the lips of the most swave of that fortunate class, who, it must be allowed, are occasionally rather irritable, characteristic expressions of contempt; and that so far from thinking their peculiarity any impediment, except merely in speech, they pride themselves, as well as they may, from experience, on the advantage it gives them in a colloquy, over the glib. If to carry its point at last be the end of eloquence, they are not only the most eloquent, but the only eloquent of men. No stammerer was ever beaten in argument- his opponents always are glad to give in-and often, after they have given in, and suppose their submission has been accepted, they find the contrary of all that from a 3 н |