who is refused admittance to his cell, When the skies are deep in the stainless noon, His imprisonment, however, had entirely destroyed a constitution already shaken by the agitation of so many disappointed passions, and the gradual decay of life is painted by Mr Shelley with great power and pathos. The closing scene, though somewhat fantastic, as indeed the whole of Helen's history is, could have been written by none but a genuine poet. Lionel's mother had built a temple in memory and honour of a dog (the only saint in her calendar), that had rescued her from drowning, to which we are told she often resorted, and VOL. V. The villagers Mixt their religion up with her's, One eve he led me to this fane: That love, when limbs are interwoven, And music, when one beloved is singing, And from my bosom, labouring With some unutterable thing: And from the twinkling wires among, With all its beauty, we feel that the above passage inay, to many minds, seem forced and extravagant, but there can be but one opinion of the following one, than which Byron himself never wrote any thing finer. No memory more And the stars methought grew unlike ours, Nor less No doubt, though memory faithless be, Our extracts have been already long -but it is our anxious desire to bring the genius of this poet fairly before Into the peace of his dominion cold: Mr Shelley's writings have, we believe, hitherto had but a very limited circulation, and few of our periodical brethren have condescended to occupy their pages with his poetry. It is one of the great objects of this journal to support the cause of genius and of imagination-and we are confident that our readers will think we have done so in this number, by the full and a bundant specimens of fine poetry which we have selected from Percy Bysshe Shelley and Barry Cornwall. We trust that the time will soon come when the writings of such men will stand in no need of our patronage.— Meanwhile we give them ours, such as it is worth, and that it is worth more than certain persons are willing to allow, is proved by nothing more decidedly than the constant irritation and fretfulness of those on whom we cannot in conscience bestow it. But we cannot leave Mr Shelley without expressing ourselves in terms of the most decided reprobation of many of his principles, if, indeed, such vague indefinite and crude vagaries can, by any latitude of language, be so designated. And, first of all, because priests have been bloody and intolerant, is it worthy of a man of liberal education and great endowments, to talk with uniform scorn and contempt of the ministers of religion? Can any thing be more puerile in taste, more vulgar in feeling, more unfounded in fact, or more false in philosophy? Mr Shelley goes out of his way-out of the way of the leading passion of his poetry to indulge in the gratification of this low and senseless abuse and independently of all higher considerations, such ribaldry utterly the hearts of his readers, and too fredestroys all impassioned emotion in quently converts Mr Shelley from a poet into a satirist, from a being who ought, in his own pure atmosphere, to be above all mean prejudices, into a slave, basely walking in voluntary trammels. From his hatred and contempt of priests, the step is but a short one to something very like hatred and contempt of all religion—and accordingly superstition is a word eternally upon his lips. How many fine, pure, and noble spirits does he thus exclude from his audience? And how many sympathies does he dry up in his own heart? If the christain faith be all fable and delusion, what does this infatuated young man wish to substitute in its stead? One seeks, in vain, through his poetry, fine as it often is, for any principles of action in the characters who move before us. They are at all times fighting against the law of the world, the law of nature, and the law of God-there is nothing satisfactory in their happiness, and always something wilful in their misery. could Mr Shelley's best friend and most warm admirer do otherwise than confess that he is ever an obscure and cheerless moralist, even when his sentiments are most lofty, and when he declaims with greatest eloquence against the delusions of religious faith. That a poet should be blind, deaf, and insensible to the divine beauty of Christianity, is wonderful and deplorable, when, at the same time, he is so alive to the beauty of the external world, and, in many instances, to that Nor 1 of the human soul. If Mr Shelley were a settled-a confirmed disbeliever, we should give him up as a man of whom no high hopes could ration ally be held-but we think him only an inconsiderate and thoughtless scoffer, who will not open his eyes to a sense of his wickedness and folly-and therefore it is that we express ourselves thus strongly, not out of anger or scorn, but real sorrow, and sincere affection. own passion, in violation of such awful restraints-and gave life to innocent creatures for whom this world was in all probability to be a world of poverty, sorrow, and humiliation. But we have stronger charges still -even than these-against this poet. What is it that he can propose to himself by his everlasting allusions to the unnatural loves of brothers and sisters? In this poem there are two stories of this sort-altogether gratuitous-and, as far as we can discover, illustrative of nothing. Why then introduce such thoughts, merely to dash, confound, and horrify? Such monstrosities betoken a diseased mind; certain that such revolting passages coming suddenly upon us, in the midst of so much exquisite beauty, startle us out of our dream of real human life, and not only break in upon, but put to flight all the emotions of pleasure and of pathos with which we were following its disturbed courses. God knows there is enough of evil and of guilt in this world, without our seeking to raise up such hideous and unnatural phantasms of wickedness It is also but too evident, from Mr Shelley's poetry, that he looks with an evil eye on many of the most venerable institutions of civil polity. His creed seems to be the same, in many points, as that once held by a cele--but be this as it may-it is most brated political writer and novelist, who has lived to abjure it. But in all that Godwin wrote, one felt the perfect sincerity of the man-whereas, Mr Shelley seems to have adopted such opinions, not from any deep conviction of their truth, but from waywardness and caprice, from the love of singularity, and, perhaps, as a vain defence against the reproaches of his own conscience. His opinions, therefore, carry no authority along with them to others -nay, they seem not to carry any authority with them to himself. The finer essence of his poetry never penetrates them-the hues of his imagination never clothes them with attractive beauty. The cold, bald, clumsy, and lifeless parts of this poem are those in which he obtrudes upon us his contemptible and long-exploded dogmas. Then his inspiration deserts him. He never stops nor stumbles in his career, except when he himself seems previously to have laid blocks before the wheels of his chariot. Accordingly there is no great moral flow in his poetry. Thus, for example, what lesson are we taught by this eclogue, Rosalind and Helen? Does Mr Shelley mean to prove that marriage is an evil institution, because by it youth and beauty may be condemned to the palsied grasp of age, avarice and cruelty? Does he mean to shew the injustice of law, because a man may by it bequeath his property to strangers, and leave his wife and children beggars? Does he mean to shew the wickedness of that law by which illegitimate children do not succeed to the paternal and hereditary estates of their father? The wickedness lay with Lionel and with Helen, who, aware of them all, indulged their but thus to mix them up for no earthly purpose with the ordinary events of human calamity and crime, is the last employment which a man of genius would desire-for there seems to be really no inducement to it, but a diseased desire of degrading and brutifying humanity. We hope ere long to see the day when Mr Shelley, having shaken himself free from these faults-faults so devoid of any essential or fundamental alliance with his masterly geniuswill take his place as he ought to do, not far from the first poets of his time. It is impossible to read a page of his Revolt of Islam, without perceiving that in nerve and pith of conception he approaches more nearly to Scott and Byron than any other of their contemporaries-while in this last little eclogue, he touches with equal mastery the same softer strings of pathos and tenderness which had before responded so delightfully to the more gentle inspirations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Wilson. His fame will yet be a glorious plant if he do not blast its expanding leaves by the suicidal chillings of immorality -a poison that cannot be resisted long by any product of the soil of England. BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY TO ENGLAND IN 1626.* THERE are very few of the lamentations of the Edinburgh Reviewers with which we have sympathized so heartily as with some they uttered a few months ago over the decay of memoir-writing. It is indeed a pitiable thing to see how the people of the present age are put off with flimsy discussions; and how little of the solid food of facts is put in their way by those who purvey for their reading appetites; but we would hope the hints that have been given may not be lost upon all those who are able to profit by them; and that the present age, so fruitful in strange men and strange doings, may not, after all, be permitted to pass away without producing some works (we ourselves considering our time of life can scarcely hope to witness their publication) wherein the minute details of both men and doings may be set forth in something of the same genuine spirit of gossipping which has rendered the French books of memoirs the most delightful reading in the world, and perhaps not the least instructive. Mr D' Israeli possesses the true turn for the thing, and in regard to many past periods of our history, he has done much; but then his situation in life, or rather his habits, may render it unlikely that he should write any very interesting memoirs of his own times, except perhaps literary ones. We hail with much delight, in the editor of the book which now lies before us, the appearance of a lover of anecdote, who, unless we be sadly at fault in all our guesses, possesses every access as we can surely see he does every talent, necessary for enabling him to be the faithful chronicler of the petits faits, wrongly so called, of his day. We consider this publication of Marshal Bassompierre's Embassy as the earnest of greater things; and shall indeed be mightily mistaken if the ingenious person who has presented it to us, does not leave richer legacies to our children.-Verbum sapienti, aut sapientibus. The period of English history which has on the present occasion engaged his attention, is one that can never cease to possess all manner of interest. Every name that occurs is familiar and every new anecdote that can be dug out of the records of the time, is prized by us as an addition to our knowledge of our own acquaintances. Nobody can ever be weary of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and the crowd of minor luminaries which blazed dimly about that illustrious and surpassing star. Each of them-the very least-has acquired a portion of the prevailing charm-of the banquet of their pecul iarities there is no satiety. The more sacred interest which the character and fate of Charles dispenses so largely over all that had any share in his pleasures or sorrows-is a thing rather too serious to be alluded to, in relation to matters of so trifling moment as are those brought to light upon the present occasion. The editor, as he modestly styles himself, has very nearly a perfect right to be called the author of this book, for his notes bear a more than Parr-like proportion to the text they are designed to elucidate. Nothing can be more meagre, dry, and in itself unreadable, than the Marshal de Bassompierre's narrative of the incidents of his brief embassy. The purpose of his mission was not very importantmerely to arrange some disputes about the French priests in the household of Queen Henrietta-and he has noted down the occurrences of the few days the mission lasted, with a brevity that is quite provoking. But that which would have made any ordinary reader throw down his book after a few seconds, has only served to rivet the excited curiosity of this editor with unconquerable tenacity, and the copious elucidations which have now been heaped upon the Marshal's narrow slip of hints, leaves us little reason to complain of its original nakedness and darkness of outline. We recommend the book most heartily to all who relish the kind of reading of which it furnishes a specimen-indeed there is no question it must take its place in every English library, close beside Howell's letters, and the other assecla of Clarendon. The value of the researches embodied in it, and the elegant naiveté of the style in which they make their appearance, will be appreciated as they should be • Memoirs of the Embassy of the Marshal de Bassompierre to the Court of England in 1626: translated-with Notes. 8vo. Murray, London, 1819. |