A nightingale in transport, seem'd to fling
His warble out, and then sit listening:
And ever and anon, amid the flush

Of the thick leaves, there ran a breezy gush;
And then, from dewy myrtles lately bloomed,
An odour small, in at the window, fumed."

The passing of the waters is more picturesquely touched than any thing of the kind I ever met with-" It is of the water, watery."-The Abydanian's voyages were prosperous during the summer season, when

66 The night was almost clear as day,
Wanting no torch; and then with easy play
He dipp'd along beneath the silver moon,
Placidly hearkening to the water's tune."

But the pleasant days of autumn now were over,

Began to clang against the coming rain,

And peevish winds ran cutting o'er the sea,
Which at its best look'd dark and slatily.—

*

*

*

But still he came, and still she bless'd his sight;
And so, from day to day, he came and went,
Till time had almost made her confident.

One evening, as she sat, twining sweet bay
And myrtle garlands for a holiday,—

She thought with such a full and quiet sweetness
Of all Leander's love,

All that he was, and said, and look'd, and dared,
His form, his step, his noble head full-haired,

*

That the sharp pleasure mov❜d her like a grief,
And tears came dropping with their meek relief.—
Meanwhile the sun had sunk; the hilly mark
Across the straits mix'd with the mightier dark,
And night came on. All noises by degrees
Were hush'd,—the fisher's call, the birds, the trees,
All—but the washing of the eternal seas.
Hero look'd out, and trembling augured ill,
The darkness held its breath so very still.
But yet she hop'd he might arrive before
The storm began, or not be far from shore;

*

she said a tearful pray'r,

And mounted to the tower, and shook the torch's flare. But he, Leander, almost half across,

Threw his blithe locks behind him with a toss,

And hail'd the light victoriously, secure

Of clasping his kind love,

When suddenly, a blast, as if in wrath,

Sheer from the hills, came headlong on his path.”

The story now necessarily follows Musæus,

66

but there are some sweet touches of nature. Though these extracts have proved of greater length than was intended, I trust the reader will forgive them, and join with me in commending the total absence of all frigid, unmeaning epithets, and mere ambitious verbal delineation. "There is none of that adulterated phraseology," as the philosophic Wordsworth says, none of that unusual language vulgarly called 'poetic diction,' which thrusts out of sight the plain humanities of nature," but the story runs on to its fulfilment, with the same unity of feeling as if it had been thrown off at a sitting. I cannot tell how tempered may be the heart of the reader, but for mine own part, I confess, that even now while perusing this tale of true love for the twentieth time, my throat swells, and my eyes gush out with tears.-Perhaps, however, there is something in the congenial season,-the gray and watery sky above, the dank grass below, and flagging Auster blowing heavily against the trees, shattering the tawney leaves, but I forget myself. The remarks that are purposed on the

principal poem, must not be delayed farther; and, first, for Marlow's share.

There is in all the Elizabethan writers a wonderful exuberance and display of mental riches: they give full measure, heaped, and running over." They mingle every thing," says that choice critic Lamb, "run line into line, embarrass sentences and metaphors. The judgment is perfectly overwhelmed with the confluence of images," &c. These general remarks apply to the particular case before us. Taken as a whole, Marlow's "Hero and Leander contains much to blame, but, considered by sections, more out of all proportion to praise. The quickness of his fancy would not allow him to treat the story simply he was obliged to branch forth into splendid superfluities.—The human part of his plot is good, but he could not let well alone.-Thus he has scarcely finished Leander's passionately eloquent wooing, and the rich-haired Hero's unconscious assent, given with such sweet naiveté, when he launches out into an episode, brightly coloured, and ingeniously compacted it

is true; but which from its needlessness to the human interest of the poem, becomes neither more or less than an overgrown conceit. This mode of judging bears still harder on that long description in the Second Sestyad, of Leander's swimming; where it seems extremely difficult for Marlow to decide whether Neptune shall be a real God, or a mere personification of the waves. An author should be consistent with himself,—it will never do to make use of Mercury, or Cupid, or Neptune now as mythological personages, and then as abstractions-but enough already of vituperation.-The versification is extremely musical, and preserves a mean between the monotony of Pope, and the tiresome frequency of Chalkhill's overlappings :—many of the lines might be securely dove-tailed into Dryden's narrative poems. Neither is the language unsuited by its harshness to the melody of the verses, being remarkably free from quaintnesses, which in Marlow consist not in phrases, but in ideas. Our author employs not many direct similes, though expository comparisons often :-