Now sleeping in a pool, that laves the roots
Of overhanging trees, whose drooping boughs
Dip midway over in the darkened stream;
While ever and anon, upon the breeze,
The dash of distant waterfall is borne.

A range of hills, with craggy summits crowned,
And furrowed deep with many a bosky cleugh,
Wards off the northern blast: There skims the hawk

Forth from her cliff, eyeing the furzy slope
That joins the mountain to the smiling vale.
Through all the woods the holly evergreen,
And laurel's softer leaf, and ivied thorn,
Lend winter shelter to the shivering wing.

No gravelled paths, pared from the smooth-shaved turf,
Wind through these woods the simple unmade road,
Marked with the frequent hoof of sheep or kine,

i

Or rustic's studded shoe, I love to tread.

No threatening board forewarns the homeward hind,
Ofman-traps, or of law's more dreaded gripe.
Pleasant to see the labourer homeward hie
Light hearted, as he thinks his hastening steps
Will soon be welcomed by his children's smile!
Pleasant to see the milkmaid's blythesome look,
As to the trysting thorn she gaily trips.

With steps that scarcely feel the elastic ground!'

Yet even in this passage, it would be no difficult task to prove that a good deal is not poetry; for blank verse must not only be without a fault, but without a weakness. A jumble of unlucky consonants wounds, a collision of two open Towels kills it. But oh! Mr. Grahame, how could you write such lines as these, or, if you could write them, call then poetry?

Before the cuckoo's note, she, (the swallow) twittering, gay, Skims 'long the brook, or o'er the brush-wood tops,

When dance the midgy clouds in warping maze

Confus'd.

P. 65.

There are who doubt this migratory voyage.' r. 67.

She has the death: upward a little space

She springs, then plumb-down drops.' P. 85, &c. &c. &c. We cannot perhaps object many downright violations of metre and harmony to Mr. G.'s versification; but its weaknesses and meannesses are numerous, and those (as we have hinted before) are among the most unpardonable blemishes with which blank verse can be stained.

Proceed we next to Mr. G.'s scutiments; and this poem, like his last, is not without many beauties in that respect.

1

His soul is always animated with a love of freedom, humanity, and piety; aud from his works we must believe him an excellent man, if not an excellent poet. He seems also to possess a tas e with regard to the works of art and nature, which is in some respects so much in unison with our own, that we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of continuing the quotation we have above made, as an example of it.

Nor be the lowly dwellings of the poor
Thrust to a distance, as unseemly sights.
Curse on the heartless taste that, proud, exclaims,
"Erase the hamlet, sweep the cottage off;
"Remove each stone, and only leave behind

"The trees that once embowered the wretched huts.
"What though the inmates old, who hoped to end
"Their days below these trees, must seek a home,
"Far from their native fields, far from the graves
"In which their fathers lie,-to city lanes,
"Darksome and close, exiled? It must be so;
"The wide extending lawn would else be marred,
"By objects so incongruous." Barbarous taste!
Stupidity intense! You straw-roofed cot,
Seen through the elms, it is a lovely sight!
That scattered hamlet, with its burn-side green,
On which the thrifty housewife spreads her yarn,
Or half-breached web, while children busy play,
And paddle in the stream.'

His ideas on the picturesque are altogether accordant with Mr. Price, from whose book he has euriched his notes with considerable quotations.

But the morality and piety of Mr. G.'s sentiments are above all praise, and the strain in which they are conveyed is sometimes not unworthy of the theme. The following passage is connected with the last that we have transcribed: I love the neighbourhood of man and beast :

I would not place my stable out of sight.
No! close behind my dwelling, it should form
A fence, on one side, to my garden plat.
What beauty equals shelter, in a chime

Where wintry blasts with summer breezes blend,
Chilling the day! How pleasant 'tis to bear

December's winds, amid surrounding trees,
Raging aloud! how grateful 'tis to wake,

While raves the midnight storm, and hear the sound
Of busy grinders at the well filled rack;

Or flapping wing, and crow of chanticleer,
Long ere the lingering morn; or bouncing flails,
That tell the dawn is near! Pleasant the path

By sunny garden wall, when all the fields
Are chill and comfortless; or barn-yard snug,"
Where flocking birds, of various plume, and chirp
Discordant, cluster on the leaning stack,

From whence the thresher draws the rustling sheaves.
'O, nature! all thy seasons please the eye
Of him who sees a Deity in all.

It is His presence that diffuses charms

Unspeakable, o'er mountain, wood, and stream.
To think that He, who hears the heavenly choirs,
Hearkens complacent to the woodland song;
To think that He, who rolls yon solar sphere,
Uplifts the warbling songster to the sky;
To mark His presence in the mighty bow,
That spans the clouds, as in the tints minute
Of tiniest flower; to hear His awful voice
In thunder speak, and whisper in the gale;
To know, and feel His care for all that lives ;-
"Tis this that makes the barren waste appear
A fruitful field, each grove a paradise.
Yes! place me 'mid far stretching woodless wilds,
Where no sweet song is heard; the heath-bell there
Would soothe my weary sight, and tell of Thee!
There would my gratefully uplifted eye
Survey the heavenly vault, by day,—by night,
When glows the firmament from pole to pole;
There would my overflowing heart exclaim,
The heavens declare the glory of the Lord,
The firmament shews forth his handy work!'

But even here we are obliged to recur to the ungrateful task of censure. Nothing can be more injudicious, nothing more absurd than the custom, which Mr. Grahame's veneration for the scriptures and scriptural language has led him into, of tagging a text to the end of a poetical sentence. It has an effect quite foreign from his intention; for it is at once irreverent, and ludicrous to every ear but the author's; and it is for this reason that we utterly condemn,and with somewhat of papal indignation anathematise his Biblical Pictures,' which form the second portion of this book.

Having observed this notorious defect of sentiment (or rather of expression), we will pass slightly over the rest. Mr. G. need not, in general, descend to a comparison of his sentiments with those of Southey, and Co., or the insipid and nauseous part of their sickly admirers and imitators. Yet he occasionally falls into some, which the most grovelling of the tribe would almost shrink from acknowledging, Witness the following;

"Even in a bird, the simplest notes have charms
For me: I even love the yellow-hammer's song.'

(Where were your rules and compasses, Mr. Grahame ?)

'Nor does he cease his note, till autumn's leaves
Fall fluttering round his golden head so bright.
Fair plumaged bird! cursed by the causeless hate
Of every schoolboy, still by me thy lot
Was pitied! never did I tear thy nest:
I loved thee, pretty bird!" P. 27.

How pretty and infantine! But he proceeds to give the reason; which is, that the yellow-hammer's nest was the first nest which he found when he first went out nest-hunting! The description of the nest, and his rapture at finding it must not be omitted; the latter is the finest instance of Bathos, that is any where to be met with.

'The hidden prize, of wither'd field-straws formed,
Well lined with many a coil of hair and moss,

And in it laid five red-veined spheres, I found.'

Who would imagine that these spheres were yellow-hammer's eggs. But it is a pun, gentle reader-Look further, and you'll discover it.

The Syracusan's voice did not exclaim

The grand Heureka, with more rapturous joy

Than at that moment fluttered round my heart.' P. 28.

We must, indeed, apply to Mr.G.'s yellow-hammer a motto, which a friend of ours once bestowed on a certain poetical gentleman, whose misfortune it was to derive his name from the feathered tribe:

Infelix avis! Et Cecropiæ domûs Eternum Opprobrium!” The following is also remarkably innocent :

Now warm stack-yards, and barns,

Busy with bouncing flails, are Robin's haunts:

Upon the barn's half-door he doubting lights,

And inward peeps. But truce, sweet social bird!" P. 33.

But a more unpardonable crime than all these, one so black that Mr. G.'s poetical soul can never be forgiven, is the occupation to which he condemns the mighty Wallace, worse, ten thousand timesworse,than the meanest of the transformations which Epistemon vouched for of yore among the heroes of antiquity:

These are the very rocks, on which the eye
Of WALLACE gazed, the music this he loved.
Oft' has he stood upon the trembling brink,
Unstay'd by tree or twig, absorbed in thought;
There would he trace, with eager eye, the oak,
Uprooted from its bank by ice- fraught floods,
And floating o'er the dreadful cataract :
There would he-'

Ob gentle reader, what do you expect?

moralize upon its fate !!!"

and in fact, like a child who, seeing a clock on the point of striking, feels a presentiment that, if he can reach such a post before the first stroke, he shall not be flogged to day, calculates the freedom of Scotland by the chance of the broken trunk rising or sinking

It re-appears with scarce a broken bough,

It re-appears, Scotland may yet be free! P. 73.

Oh incredible Bathos! If this be nature, may we never again read any but the most unnatural poetry!

We have been led to so great a length by the observations which the principal piece in this collection suggested to us, that we have no room to criticise on those which remain. Indeed we could find very little to say about them. Our opinion of the Biblical Pictures' we have already expressed. The Rural Calendar' is, like Spenser's, framed for every month in the year, and each of the pieces may, like his Eclogues, belong to the whole season as well as to the individual month. But, unlike Spenser's, they have no variety, no rustic elegance, no pastoral loveliness, and they are in blank verse. Yet some pleasing and some poetical passages occur in them; they contain nothing very objectionable in expression, and some things very commendable in sentiment. Of the minor pieces nothing either good or evil can well be said; and upon the whole, if Mr. G. has by this publication diminished the opinion we began to form of him as a poet, he has increased our esteem of him as a liberal, huand religious man.

ART.Il-practical Treatise on the Diseases of the Stomach and Digestion. By Arthur Daniel Stone, M. D. Cut. Reg. Londin. Med. Soc. Cadell. 1805.

DR. Stone has divided his work into three parts. The first treats of the anatomy of the stomach and intestines, and contains likewise a few physiological remarks and experiments, intended to illustrate the process of digestion; the