FANCY. While he, from forth the closet, brought a heap "Those delicates he heap'd with glowing hand, Filling the chilly room with perfume light. Ope thy sweet eyes! for dear St. Agnes' sake!'" 389 It is difficult to break off in such a course of citation: But we must stop here; and shall close our extracts with the following lively lines: "O sweet Fancy! Let her loose! What do then? Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear faggot blazes bright, Spirit of a winter's night; When the soundless earth is muffled, To banish Even from her sky. Thou shalt hear Distant harvest carols clear; Rustle of the reaped corn; Sweet birds antheming the morn; hark! 'Tis the early April lark, 390 66 And every leaf, and every flower Then the hurry and alarm When the bee-hive casts its swarm; Acorns ripe down pattering, While the autumn breezes sing."-p. 122 125. There is a fragment of a projected Epic, entitled Hyperion," on the expulsion of Saturn and the Titanian deities by Jupiter and his younger adherents, of which we cannot advise the completion: For, though there are passages of some force and grandeur, it is sufficiently obvious, from the specimen before us, that the subject is too far removed from all the sources of human interest, to be successfully treated by any modern author. Mr. Keats has unquestionably a very beautiful imagination, a perfect ear for harmony, and a great familiarity with the finest diction of English poetry; but he must learn not to misuse or misapply these advantages; and neither to waste the good gifts of nature and study on intractable themes, nor to luxuriate too recklessly on such as are more suitable. ROGERS'S HUMAN LIFE. 391 (MARCH, 1819.) Human Life: a Poem. By SAMUEL ROGERS. 4to. pp. 94. London: 1819. THESE are very sweet verses. They do not, indeed, stir the spirit like the strong lines of Byron, nor make our hearts dance within us, like the inspiring strains of Scott: but they come over us with a bewitching softness that, in certain moods, is still more delightful and soothe the troubled spirits with a refreshing sense of truth, purity, and elegance. They are pensive rather than passionate; and more full of wisdom and tenderness than of high flights of fancy, or overwhelming bursts of emotion-while they are moulded into grace, at least as much by the effect of the moral beauties they disclose, as by the taste and judgment with which they are constructed. The theme is HUMAN LIFE!-not only "the subject of all verse"--but the great centre and source of all interest in the works of human beings to which both verse and prose invariably bring us back, when they succeed in rivetting our attention, or rousing our emotions - and which turns every thing into poetry to which its sensibilities can be ascribed, or by which its vicissitudes can be suggested! Yet it is not by any means to that which, in ordinary language, is termed the poetry or the romance of human life, that the present work is directed. The life which it endeavours to set before us, is not life diversified with strange adventures, embodied in extraordinary characters, or agitated with turbulent passions—not the life of warlike paladins, or desperate lovers, or sublime ruffians or piping shepherds or sentimental savages, or bloody bigots or preaching pedlars or conquerors, poets, or any other species of madmen - but the ordinary, practical, and amiable life of social, 392 ROGERS CONTEMPLATIVE AND INDULGENT. intelligent, and affectionate men in the upper ranks of society — such, in short, as multitudes may be seen living every day in this country-for the picture is entirely English and though not perhaps in the choice of every one, yet open to the judgment, and familiar to the sympathies, of all. It contains, of course, no story, and no individual characters. It is properly and peculiarly contemplative and consists of a series of reflections on our mysterious nature and condition upon earth, and on the marvellous, though unnoticed changes which the ordinary course of our existence is continually bringing about in our being. Its marking peculiarity in this respect is, that it is free from the least alloy of acrimony or harsh judgment, and deals not at all indeed in any species of satirical or sarcastic remark. The poet looks here on man, and teaches us to look on him, not merely with love, but with reverence; and, mingling a sort of considerate pity for the shortness of his busy little career, and the disappointments and weaknesses by which it is beset, with a genuine admiration of the great capacities he unfolds, and the high destiny to which he seems to be reserved, works out a very beautiful and engaging picture, both of the affections by which Life is endeared, the trials to which it is exposed, and the pure and peaceful enjoyments with which it may often be filled. This, after all, we believe, is the tone of true wisdom and true virtue-and that to which all good natures draw nearer, as they approach the close of life, and come to act less, and to know and to meditate more, on the varying and crowded scene of human existence.-When the inordinate hopes of early youth, which provoke their own disappointment, have been sobered down by longer experience and more extended views -- when the keen contentions and eager rivalries which employed our riper age, have expired or been abandoned—when we have seen, year after year, the objects of our fiercest hostility, and of our fondest affections, lie down together in the hallowed peace of the grave-when ordinary plea sures and amusements begin to be insipid, and the gay A GENTLE MORALIST. 393 derision which seasoned them to appear flat and importunate when we reflect how often we have mourned and been comforted— what opposite opinions we have successively maintained and abandoned-to what inconsistent habits we have gradually been formed — and how frequently the objects of our pride have proved the sources of our shame! we are naturally led to recur to the careless days of our childhood, and from that distant starting place, to retrace the whole of our career, and that of our contemporaries, with feelings of far greater humility and indulgence than those by which it had been actually accompanied: - to think all vain but affection and honour-the simplest and cheapest pleasures the truest and most precious — and generosity of sentiment the only mental superiority which ought either to be wished for or admired. We are aware that we have said "something too much of this;" and that our readers would probably have been more edified, as well as more delighted by Mr. Rogers's text, than with our preachment upon it. But we were anxious to convey to them our sense of the spirit in which this poem is written; - and conceive, indeed, that what we have now said falls more strictly within the line of our critical duty, than our general remarks can always be said to do; - because the true character and poetical effect of the work seems, in this instance, to depend much more on its moral expression, than on any of its merely literary qualities. The author, perhaps, may not think it any compliment to be thus told, that his verses are likely to be greater favourites with the old than with the young;and yet it is no small compliment, we think, to say, that they are likely to be more favourites with his readers every year they live; - And it is at all events true, whether it be a compliment or not, that as readers of all ages, if they are any way worth pleasing, have little glimpses and occasional visitations of those truths which longer experience only renders more familiar, so no works ever sink so deep into amiable minds, or recur so often to their remembrance, as those which embody simple, |