In conclusion, we cannot but agree in opinion with Captain Krusenstern; who advises that, when a person who is unacquainted with maritime concerns undertakes to translate or edit a voyage, he should submit his performance to the inspection of some professional man: which, he observes, in England can by no means be a matter of difficulty.

At a future opportunity, we shall give an account of the observations made in this voyage by Dr. Langsdorff, one of the naturalists who accompanied the expedition, which have been separately published.

ART. VI. Gustavus Vasa, and other Poems. By W. S. Walker. 8vo. Ios. 6d. Boards. Longman and Co. 1813.

IT

T gives us real satisfaction to perceive, from the unusually magnificent list of subscribers to this work, that its young author may apparently entertain hopes founded on a basis far more solid than his poetry. His preface is sensible and well written. He informs us that he has attained only his seventeenth year, but he claims no indulgence for his tender age; he seems to concede that a bad poem admits of no excuse; and he is desirous to try himself on the touch-stone of public opinion, and thus to decide whether he shall become professionally a poet, or say, "hic versus et cætera ludicra pono.”

He is sensible, that if he delayed till time had matured his judg ment, and reflection perfected his ideas, the " scribendi cacoëthes," perhaps an unfortunate inclination, would take a firm and unalterable possession of his mind. He is therefore determined to try the public opinion; that he may be enabled either to pursue his poetical studies under their encouragement, or to desist in time from an useless employment. This volume is not intended to challenge approbation, but to be the precursor of something which may challenge it in future: it is not an attempt to gain the prize, but a specimen of his powers, which may entitle him to the honour of standing candidate for that prize. The reader will here find the genuine effusions of a youthful fancy, free, yet not uncontrolled; a collection of pieces, exempt from negligence and inaccuracy, though not from the usual and inevitable faults of early compositions. To offer less than this would be arro gant, and to require more than this would be unreasonable.'

From a young man thus seriously disposed to become acquainted with his own powers, and to practise on himself no delusion, we should deem it unpardonable to withhold the information that he seeks, and is, we hope, prepared to receive. With sentiments, therefore, not less friendly to him than those which influenced the host of honourable persons whose assistance enabled him to become publicly an author, we would advise him to desist from poetical attempts, ere the inclination become REV. JULY, 1814. strength

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strengthened into habit, and maturity of years shall remove the only trifling apology which can be offered for failure. such a work as this appeared a century ago from a very youthful pen, it might have been hailed as the harbinger of better things. The difficulties presented by metre, manner, harmony, and cadence, before Pope rendered them easy and familiar, if encountered with tolerable success, would have attracted the consideration and almost the wonder of those who were unacquainted with the mystery: but in these days of universal authorship, the possessors of the arcana are so numerous that wonder is reduced to indifference. So rapidly, indeeed, does the list of metrical writers increase, that, in the next book of synonyms, we expect to see that of poet used indifferently for man; and, as in the time of Horace it was usual to say, "There goes a poet," in this our time it will be said, to mark some extraordinary person, "There goes a man who has not written verses."

Gustavus Vasa, we are told by Mr. Walker, was first planned (the reader will smile) at eleven years of age. He then informs us of the numerous faults and extravagances which his understanding, improved by the culture of two years in advance of that age, enabled him to detect; of his destroying the manuscript, of recommencing it, and of reducing it to its present form. We venture to predict that his judgment at thirteen years of age did not more duly appreciate the effusions of his eleventh year, than his wisdom of twenty-two will condemn the rashness of seventeen. Indeed this young man is a versifier, but not a poet. Let him not imagine that we censure his faults: for both his faults and his beauties are too few. The whole is evenly, smoothly, and unalterably vapid. It is all correctly wrong. The rule and the compass, the line and the plummet, with every other instrument for measurement and proportion, are discernible in every part. It is all reason, all plan, all arrangement; and its greatest praise must be, in general, that negative eulogy, the absence of fault. It manifests no wildness, no enthusiasm, none of the "dulcia vitia" of youth which excite hopes from the compositions that they sully. For instance, let us take the matter of the argument to book the first:

• State of Sweden at the commencement of the Poem-A Council -Trollio-Bernheim Ernestus-Christiern proposes the reduction of Dalecarlia - Ernestus opposes him, is committed to prison— Christiern takes his measures to oppose a rebellion just arisen in Denmark.'

At this council, the characters of the worthies Trollio, Bernheim, and Ernestus, are given at length, in verses faultless and uninteresting as the following:

< First

First of their order, as in rank and fame
Superior, Upsal's haughty prelate came;
Erect in priestly pride, he stalk'd along,
And tower'd supreme o'er all the princely throng.
A soul congenial, and a mind replete
With ready artifice and bold deceit,

To suit a tyrant's ends, however base,

In Christiern's friendship had secured his place.
His were the senator's and courtier's parts,
And all the statesman's magazine of arts;
His, each expedient, each all-powerful wile,
To thwart a foe, or win a monarch's smile.'
Again,

But Providence, whose undiscover'd plan,
Lies deeper than the wiliest schemes of man,
Can bare the sly designer's latent guilt,
And crush to dust the structures he has built;
Can disappoint the subtle tyrant's spite,
And stem the billows of his stormy might;
Confound a Trollio's skill, a Christiern's power,
And blast presumption in its haughtiest hour.
So Christiern found and Trollio found it true,
(Unwelcome truth, to his experience new!)
That he, who trusts in guilty friendship, binds

His fortune to a cloud, that shifts with veering winds.'

The other portraits are painted in the same manner, and their speeches are somewhat faithfully imitated from those of Saint Stephen's Chapel. The second book then opens with the eternal and sempiternal soliloquies of Ernestus and Harfagar in prison. Mr. Walker could not resist an address to Sleep which, since the summary praise bestowed on it by Sancho Pança, has become one of the most dangerous of all subjects; and we have observed that few young persons, or ladies, can prevail on themselves to pass this topic in silence.

Perhaps, the transition from the scene around Mora to Gustavus Vasa, who is represented as reclining under a tree near the house of his friend the pastor, and retracing former events in his mind, is one of the most favourable specimens of the author's equable powers. It occurs in book the third:

'Twas now the time, when sober evening sheds

Her dusky mantle o'er the grassy meads:
Nor yet the pale stars trembled thro' the trees,
Nor sparkling quiver'd on the inconstant seas;
Nor yet the moon illumed the solemn scene :
The fields were silent, and the heavens serene.
The sheep had sought the fold; nor yet arose
Night's listless bird from her dull day's repose.
When in a vale with shadowy firs replete,
Whose broad boughs rustled thro' the dark retreat,
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Beneath

Beneath a pine that sunk to slow decay,
Unseen, Gustavus pass'd the hours away.
From earliest morn, ere day's third glass was run,
The chief had mused, nor mark'd the rising sun:
And the retiring day appear'd as just begun.
Each flattering argument his mind revolved,
Each gleam of patriot hope yet undissolved,
Traced to its dubious source each meteor-light,
Till the last spark went out, and all was night.
Convinced at length, he spoke : the woods around
With solemn awe return'd the mournful sound;
And souls of patriots listen'd from on high,
Uncertain yet of Sweden's destiny.

"Yes, thou must fall! oh once o'er earth renown'd,
Queen of the North, with choicest blessings crown'd,
While martial glory waited on thy voice,

And wealth and power seem'd rivals for thy choice!
Ye fond survivors of a ruined state,

Here quit, at length, your hopes of happier fate,
And view your country's fix'd unalterable date!
You were not made to fear a tyrant's frown,
To gild with tributary wealth his crown,
To welcome some deputed robber's sway,
And watch his wavering will from day to day:
No - once o'erwhelm'd beneath a tyrant's blow,
Each following age will bring increase of woe,
And every sigh, that loads the Swedish air,
Will fly the herald of a patriot's care!'

To this poem, succeed imitations of Mr. Walter Scott; and, if compared with some of the productions of that author, they tread far more closely on the originals than Mr. Scott would desire. The translation from the thirteenth Iliad has reab merit; and, if Mr. Walker should persist in his inclination to publish, we strongly advise him to steer by the ideas of great and acknowleged poets. The metre in which his version is written is admirably adapted to a fragment, or short piece; and with compositions that demand a longer breath, we wish him not again to commit himself.

The volume concludes with some Latin poems, which, the writer informs us, have been honoured by the approbation of different masters at Eton.' As specimens of Latinity, they are not discreditable to the tutor and the pupil: but we can by no means persuade ourselves that the world stood in need of any modern and equivocal Latin, in addition to that of which it is at present possessed. Metrical exercises in Latin are useful and even necessary for the attainment of the prosody and quantity of that language: but the northern idioms are so dissonant from the Roman, that, with few exceptions, we have every

reason

reason to fear that our Latin is rather a language of convention than the Latin of antiquity. The secret died with the Romans of old, and after a long night was imparted at its revival almost exclusively to the poets of Italy. Vida, Sannazarius, Fracastorius, Flaminius, and Politian, wrote Latin, because the transi tion from the lingua vulgare to the lingua antica was easy, and, in point of idiom, almost imperceptible. In these writers, we perceive no constraint, no effort, no ambitious and crabbed language: they speak as the heirs and descendants of those. who formed the dynasty of Latin poesy,-as the legal possessors of the soil, and sole proprietors of the venerable language.

ART. VII. An Inquiry into the Moral Tendency of Methodism and Evangelical Preaching. Part the Second. By William Burns. 8vo. pp. 108. 4s. Johnson and Co. 1812.

WHAT person ever seriously and deliberately chose error

for its own sake, or because it was error? All the different sects of religion mean to be right; and so rooted are they in the conviction of the truth of their own tenets, that the best reasoner will find it extremely difficult to persuade them that they are wrong. In reviewing the first part of Mr. Burns's Inquiry, (see M. R., Vol. lxvi., N. S., p. 176.) as well as the "Hints" of "a Barrister," we have freely delivered our opinion of the nature and operation of Methodism; most probably, however, without inducing one Methodist to see with our eyes. Supposing us to be right and the Evangelicals to be wrong, it is surely of some importance to inquire what is the cause of the strong delusion which so completely invelopes their minds, or to what we must attribute their mistaken views of the Gospel of Christ? We can truly say that we have met with no writer who more clearly explains these points than Mr. Burns; whose second part is as well composed as his first, and has the merit of that nice discrimination which is so absolutely necessary in all discussions of religious

tenets.

From the want either of accurate definition or of clear apprehension, from the mixture of error with truth, and from inattention in separating the former from the latter, many persons, with the best intentions, labour under the strongest selfdeception, and are zealous for false doctrine, under the notion that it is consonant with the word of God. The Calvinistic doctrine of depravity, which is the subject of the first chapter, is shewn by Mr. Burns to originate in jumbling together matters of theory and of fact; or the acknowleged frailty of human nature, and the supposition of its total moral

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