ART. 19. The Sultana: or the Jealous Queen, a Tragedy. By William Gardiner. 8vo. Longman. 1806.

WF have always understood poetry to constitute an essential part of tragedy; this is more especially requisite in a piece intended for the closet; but the reader who expects to find in the 'Sultana' a single poetical line, will be disappointed. The author indeed tells us in a preface that he is neither an Amphion, nor an Orpheus, but if his lyre can quiver the lustrous rose on beauty's cheek, and throb with pleasure the dulcet bosom of humanity, he has his rewards.' As it is just to substantiate what we have said,and as some of our readers, no doubt, are lovers of drollery, we select the following passage from the 21st page, which is one of the best speeches in this thing misnam ed a tragedy:

Howard.

I am the representative of a baronet's
Broken fortunes. To repair the shipwreck'd

Property, I procur'd the consulship at Smyrna:

The happiest gales favour'd the first days of our passage,
My mind high-swelling with wealth's vain speculations
But ere we had pass'd proud Calpe's sunny head,
The winds, as scorched by Leo's ardent rays,
Resolv'd away, and not a ripple groov'd
The purple tide, which seemed but the mirror
To the burning sky. With patience courting
Each light zephyr's breath, from morn's chill wings,
That sported in our sails, we reach'd at length
Majorca's olive strand; there waited for a wind.
In the dead time of night, a corsair full of men
Surprized our watch, and bore us in our sleep.
Sad captives to this city.'

POLITICS.

ART. 20.-A Dialogue between Buonaparte and Talleyrand, on the Subject of Peace with England. 12mo. Hatchard. 1806.

A WELL-written little work; but the use of which is superseded by the failure of the late negotiation.

ART. 21. A brief Examination into the Increase of the Revenue, Commerce, and Navigation of Great Britain, during the Ad ministration of the Right Honourable William Pitt, with Allusions to some of the principal Events which occurred in that Period, and a Sketch of Mr. Pitt's Character. By the Right Honourable George Rose, M. P. Hatchard. 1806.

THE present tract on the finances, commerce, and navigation of Great Britain, was first published in 1799, and had for a principal object, to demonstrate that the measures adopted to preserve the credit of the country, during a war unprecedented from the importance of the events which happened, as well as from the im mensity of the expence unavoidably incurred in it, not only enables

provision to be made for all the exigencies of the contest, but were attended by a rapid increase of our manufactures, our commerce, and navigation; and that notwithstanding a very large addition of new burthens, the old taxes continued to improve in their re ceipt.

This tract being now out of print, Mr. Rose has been induced to republish it, and continue the statements to the present time, în order to shew the still further improved situation of the country at the latest period to which they can be made up. Neither does he deny in his preface, that an additional motive with him has been a desire to rescue the character of his illustrious and departed friend from the aspersions of those of the opposite party, who have so industriously endeavoured to persuade the public that that statesman found his country flourishing, and left it ruined.

Mr. Rose has not pursued his original intention of carrying on the investigation from 1799 to the present day, but has continued the tables of revenue, &c. &c., which may enable the reader from his own judgment to form an adequate idea of the success of Mr. Pitt's measures. By the admirers of the late ministry this pam phlet, will be read with peculiar interest. Its nature and the date of its original publication, preclude the necessity of a lengthened detail at this period; but we shall beg leave to transcribe the author's sketch of Mr. Pitt's character, and they who shall complain of its being drawn with a flattering pencil, if they do not know how to make allowance for the powerful delusion of party preju dice, will yet, with us, acknowledge and revere the amiable partiali ties of private friendship.

"To those', says Mr. R.' who enjoyed his intimacy I might safely refer for the proof of his possessing those private virtues and endowments, which, though they may sometimes be accounted foreign to the public character of a statesman, the congenial feelings of Englishmen always dispose them to regard as the best pledges of a minister's upright ad, `ministration. Around these in the present case an additional lustre, as well as sacredness, has been thrown by the circumstances of his death; by the manner in which he met it; and by the composure, the fortitude, the resignation, and the religion, which marked his last moments. With a manner somewhat reserved and distant in what might be termed his public deportment, no man was ever better qualified to gain, or more successful in fixing the attachment of his friends, than Mr. Pitt. They saw all the powerful energies of his character softened into the most perfect complacency and sweetness of disposition in the circles of private life, the pleasures of which no one more cheerfully enjoyed or more agreeably promot ed, when the paramount duties he conceived himself to owe to the public admitted of his mixing in them. That indignant severity with which he met and subdued what he considered unfounded opposition; that keenness of sarcasm with which he repelled and withered (as it might be said) the powers of most of his assailants

in debate, were exchanged in the society of his intimate friends for a kindness of heart, a gentleness of demeanor, and a playfulness of good humour, which no one ever witnessed without interest, or participated without delight. His mind, which, in the grasp and extent of its capacity, seized with a quickness almost intuitive all the most important relations of political power and political economy, was not less uncommonly susceptible of all the light and elegant impressions which form the great charm of conversation to cultivated minds.

This sensibility to the enjoyments of private friendship greatly enhanced the sacrifice he made of every personal indulgence and comfort to a rigid performance of duty to the public; that duty, for the last year of his life, was indeed of the most laborious and unremitting kind. The strength of his attachment to his sovereign, and the ardour of his zeal for the welfare of his country, led him to forego not only every pleasure and amusement, but almost every pause and relaxation of business necessary to the preservation of health, till it was too late, in a frame like his, alas! for the preservation of life!! That life he sacrificed to his country, not certainly like another most valuable and illustrious servant of the public, (whose death has been deeply and universally lamented) amidst those animating circumstances in which the incomparable hero often ventured it in battle, and at last resigned it for the most splendid of all his unexampled victories; but with that patriotic self-devotedness which looks for a reward only in its own consciousness of right, and in its own secret sense of virtue.

The praise of virtue, of honour, and of disinterested purity, whether in public or private character, need scarcely be claimed for his memory; for those, his enemies (if he now has any, which I am unwilling to believe, although some are frequently endeavouring to depreciate his merits) will not venture to deny; and his country, in whose cause they were exercised to the last, will know how to value and record them. That they should be so valued and recorded is important on every principle of justice to the individual and of benefit to the community. To an upright minister in Great Britain, zealous for the interest and honour of his country, there is no reward of profit, emolument, or patronage, which can be esteemed a compensation for the labours, the privations, the anxieties, or the dangers of his situation: it is in the ap probation of his sovereign, and in the suffrage of his countrymen, added to his own conviction of having done every thing to deserve it, that he must look for that reward which is to console him for all the cares and troubles of his station; the opposition of rivals; the mis-representation of enemies; the desertion or peevishness of friends; and sometimes the mistaken censures of the people 'Tis the honourable ambition that looks beyond the present time that must create, encourage, and support a virtuous and enlightened statesman; that must confer on his mind the uprightness and purity

that rise above all self-advantage; the courage that guards the state from foreign hostility or internal faction; the firmness that must often resist the wishes, to ensure the safety, of the people.

This is the legitimate ambition of a statesman; and that Mr. Pitt possessed it his friends are convinced; but he has been sometimes accused (by those who, although their opposition was active and systematic, yet knew how to honour the man) of a less laudable and less patriotic ambition, that wished "to reign alone," to exclude from the participation of office and of power other men, whose counsels might have assisted him to guide the country amidst its difficulties and embarrassments, or might have contributed to its safety in the hour of its danger. It is however perfectly well known to some of the highest characters in the kingdom, that Mr. Pitt, after the resignation of Mr. Addington, in the summer of 1804, was most anxiously desirous that Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox should form a part of the new administration, and pressed their admission into office in that quarter where only such earnestness could be effectual; conceiving the forming a strong government as important to the public welfare, and as calculated to call forth the united talents, as well as the utmost resources of the empire; in which endeavour he persisted till within a few months of his death. I am aware of the delicacy of such a statement, but I am bold in the certainty of its truth. My profound respect for those by whom such averment, if false, might be contradicted, would not suffer me to make it, were it not called for to do justice to that great and virtuous statesman, whose unrivalled qualities, both in private and in public life, will ever be in my recollection.'

POETRY.

ART. 22.-Calista, or a Picture of Modern Life. A Poem, in Three Parts. By Luke Booker, LL.D. 4to. Button.

THE rapture experienced by a mother in nursing her own infant; the folly and wickedness of those parents who neglect their children during infancy, together with the fashionable routine of a dissipated female parent (Calista); the consequences of her deviation from the paths of virtue; the progress of her delinquency, and final misery, are pourtrayed by Dr. Luke Booker in fifty nine stanzas, on none of which can we bestow any degree of praise. The poem opens with the follow ing, which from the nature of their subject, and the pleasing recollections they are calculated to awaken, may afford to the married reader that pleasure, which their poetical beauties have not been able to excite in us forlorn individuals, who tread the cheerless paths of unendearing celibacy.

"Who but a parent can a parent's joy

Conceive, when to her breast devoid of guile,
Caress'd caressing-clings her darling boy,

And owns his mother with a dimpling smile?
The tear of rapture in her eye the while
Glistening: thus o'er the brilliant star of even
Transparent oft are seen the new-born dews of heaven.

This rapture, O each happy pair! is yours
Who, with congenial virtues, fondly trace
The path of wedded love; whose flame endures,
Though evanescent, every youthful grace
Fly from the form and fade upon the face :-
Lo! in your blooming progeny is view'd
Each grace

that once was yours, with added charm renew❜d,

• This luxury ineffable of soul,

My faithful Anna! crowns our wedded days,
Which far remote from grandeur onward roll.
Yet better joys and ampler wealth surveys
Thy beaming eye, than what the bosom sways
Of Fashion's gayest dames. Long, long be thine
The mother's pleasing cares,-the mother's bliss divine!"

Dr. Booker addresses his work to lard Eldon, on whom he passes a panegyric in his last stanza, and compliments in a note on his exertions to suppress gaming and adultery. Our poet's indignation at the latter crying sin seems to have been peculiarly instrumental in calling forth the present copy of verses, and he does his best to put a stop to it by pointing out what he thinks will be a most efficacious penalty.

'Whatever judicial measures of the nature of damages' may be instituted against those adulterers, who, as the prophet says, are as fed horses-every one neighing after his neighbour's wife;" whatever penalty may be levied upon their purse, would be of small avail to curb and restrain them within the fences of virtue, till some penalty also affect their person. And perhaps the most efficacious one would be solitary confinement, prolonged according to the peculiar turpitude of the offence. During that confinement, no person should be permitted to have access to the culprit but the keeper and ordinary of the prison: nor should any books or publi cations be allowed him but such as have an acknowledged tendency to produce contrition and reformation.-Restrictions concerning diet should also be rigorously adhered to. A similar proċess and regimen should be adopted with respect to the adulteress also. 'The effects of solitude and abstinence, of corrective and consoling religion upon an awakened guilty mind, would rarely fail of being salutary. p. 27.