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We conclude this article by expressing our wish that every great and good man may, in proportion to his talents and his virtues, find as warm an admirer and as able and disinterested a panegyrist, as the first statesman of our own times has here obtained in the first scholar living. The incentives to honourable conduct in men of exalted station cannot be too numerous; and the praise bestowed on unaffected virtue holds forth a motive and an example to the remotest generations.

ART. II. Spanish Heroism; or, the Battle of Roncesvalles. A Metrical Romance, in Five Cantos. By John Belfour, Esq., Author of "Music," a Didactic Poem, &c. &c. Royal 8vo. 10s. 6d. Boards. Vernor and Hood. 1809.

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POET, of confessedly great talents, has in these days revived among us the race of Minstrels, or rather has become the founder of the New Academy of Metrical Romance. That he has greatly improved the style of his rude originals; that he excels in animated description, and in the glowing representation of chivalrous times and manners; nay more that he abounds (to borrow the expressive language of Johnson)" in images which find a mirror in every mind, and in sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo;" we should be insensible indeed to deny. Yet, having allowed him this high and merited praise, we should be equally wanting in critical discrimination, if we failed to remark his gross incorrectness of expression, his barbarous mixture of antient with modern phraseology, his insufferable licence in violating every law of rhythm and measure, his utter inattention (except in the more interesting parts of his subject) to harmonious pause and cadence, and, above all, his childish introduction of spirits without dignity,-mere nursery goblins,—and of heroes without honesty, perfect Old Bailey-practitioners. He bears, too, on his shoulders the heaviest sin of misapplied genius and perverted taste, inasmuch as he has been the faulty model of a

We should apologize for our delay in not having noticed Mr. Belfour's poem on Music, and for the anachronism in reviewing first the volume which has been so long posterior in its appearance: but the subject of the present work is of a more temporary nature; and if the incidental circumstances, which have occurred to cause our apparent neglect of the former, do not operate against the latter, we are unwilling to repeat the fault when we cannot plead a similar

excuse.

thousand

thousand imitators; who, without any of his acknowleged powers, conceive that they are following in the path of a nobler original than classical antiquity can afford them; that they have broken the school-boy trammels in which their fathers were confined by their imitation of Homer and Virgil; and that, by a wild irregularity of verse, and a few cant phrases of heraldry and architecture, they are establishing for themselves the character of patent improved Troubadours of the nineteenth century, whose medicines are sold by every principal tradesman in town and country, made up according to the receipt of the inventor at Edinburgh.

These observations, which are every day more forcibly suggested to our minds, may offend the devoted panegyrists of even the faults of Genius: but, if strenuously and repeatedly urged, they cannot fail to convince the more reflecting part of our readers that they are founded in truth.-That with the beauties of the writer to whom we allude are intermixed whole pages of dry antiquarian detail; and that the most patient listener is sick of seneschal, squire, and sewer, of linstock, jack, and actor; of moss-trooper, and hackbutteer, and his bandelier; of fleur-de-lys and of quatrefeuille; that he is sick, we say, of these things, who will deny or who will wonder?

"Quis tam Lucili fautor ineptè est

Ut non hoc fateatur ?

Nempè incomposito dixi pede currere versus

Lucili."

But that we have sympathized with the last and noblest of the Minstrels, that

"We have listened and stood still

As it came softened up the hill,
And deemed it the lament of men

Who languished for their native glen,❞—

that we have felt the sweetness of these numbers, and of many other similar passages in the latter, and of still more in the former of these poems, it were injustice to ourselves not to record.O si sic omnia! have we exclaimed with heartfelt admiration and regret; had this been the case, had fewer faults debased this original and lofty train, then might we have exultingly added

"Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii!

Altior en! nostra Musa Caledonia."

Till this glory shall be ours, let not our poets disdain to follow those antient leaders who conducted Dryden and Pope to the temple of fame. Let them not fear that their own genius, trans

cendent

cendent as it may be, will be cramped by the cultivation of their taste; and let them remember that the just and the natural are the foundation of the true pathetic, and the true sublime.

The volume before us is formed exactly on the model of the poems which we have been criticizing; and this circunstance will not only constitute our excuse for the preliminary remarks into which we have been led, but will shew the necessity of our prefacing those which we have to offer on Mr. Belfour, by some notice of his original. He does not indeed seem disposed to allow the copy to be so universal and so evident as we contend it is; for, in the notes to canto the third, he confesses, with an apparent consciousness of the inadequacy of his avowal, that some incidents in two of the stanzas of this canto are borrowed from Walter Scott.' Now really, when a whole poem, in point of style and manner, is a simple fac simile of another, to acknowlege that two stanzas of it are borrowed is a work of very superfluous candour. Let us, however, proceed to shew the justice of our observations from the author's own mouth:-but first we must present our readers with some account of the battle of Roncesvalles, as it is here represented, in a shape at least new to poetical description.

After having remarked that the former poets, who have undertaken this subject, have proceeded mostly on the authority of the French chronicles, Mr. Belfour thus details his own plan, which is modelled on the accounts of the Spanish historians :

Charlemagne, Emperor of France, having rendered himself illus trious by his victories, Alphonso the Chaste, King of Leon and the Asturias, being without legitimate issue, and perceiving the greater part of Spain in the possession of the Saracens, sent, secretly, a messenger to the Gallic monarch, promising, upon his demise, to invest him with the sovereignty of his kingdom, if he would march his forces into the peninsula, and assist him in the expulsion of the Moors. This Charlemagne readily assented to; and crossing, in person, the Pyrenees with his peers, and a considerable army, marched into Navarre, attacked the Moors, possessed himself of Pampeluna, and drove them completely out of that province.

This compact being communicated to the nobles and principal chieftains of Alphonso, they refused to concur in his views; and, supported by Bernardo del Carpio, determined to resist the progress of Charlemagne, should he attempt to enforce his right to the throne.

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Charles, apprized of the change in the sentiments of Alphonso, and incensed at the patriotic ardour of the nobility, who had sworn to preserve their liberties or perish; ordered a prodigious force to march into Spain, and to encamp, on the plain of Roncesvalles: whither he resolved to move from Pampeluna with the troops already

in the country, to penetrate, in person, into Leon, and dethrone the Spanish prince.

In the mean time, Alphonso, aware of his intentions, aided by his nobles, and, in a particular manner, by his kinsman, Bernardo del Carpio, called the country to arms; and assembling a numerous army from the several provinces subject to his dominion, assisted by Rodrigo, Count of Castile, and the Saracen prince, Marsilius, King of Aragon, (whom Charlemagne had imperiously called upon to pay tribute,) marched against the invader, whom he attacked on the plainof Roncesvalles; and after a most sanguinary conflict, in which nearly the whole of Charlemagne's army fell, with his peers and attendants, obtained a complete victory, and compelled the Gallic monarch to return to France, with his scattered forces, in the utmost precipitation and dismay.

The poem opens with the rejoicings of the French on the fall of Pampeluna, and, interrupted at times in its historical narration by episodes, which rather encrease, it is presumed, than diminish the interest of the story, proceeds, with regular steps, to its conclusion, by the discomfiture of Charlemagne and his army, at Roncesvalles.”

Of these episodes we must take some notice. That which occurs in the first canto is founded on the story of a Moor, who it seems has promised to bring to his unreasonable mistress the heads of Oliver, Rinaldo, and Orlando; and who for this redoubtable purpose sets forth for Pampeluna, where, having defeated the youthful knight Baldwin, he is himself vanquished and cruelly put to death by Orlando, after he has told the story of his love. The opening of a poem, it may always fairly be presumed, has not been less laboured than any other part; we shall therefore begin ab ovo, and ask our readers whether the very style of the commencement of Marmion is not here brought to their recollection:

."

Day broke on Pampeluna's towers,
And with refulgent beam,

Dispersed of night the shadowy hours.
That played round Arga's stream:--
While, full on the astonished sight,
The Pyrenean mountains, dight
With genial rays of liquid light,
Disclosed their giant form:

Where oft is heard the solemn sound

Of murmuring streams thro' caves profound,

Or roaring winds, that swell around;

The harbingers of storm.'

We shall not stay to remark such petty coincidences (since great wits will clash) as

"Their voices echoing through the hall,
Woke Sewer, and Squire, and Seneschal,"

printed

printed, indeed, with inverted commas: but, briefly reminding Mr. B. of the aukwardness of his inverted genitive case, in the third line of our first quotation

• Dispersed of night the shadowy hours,

and which occurs again, page 6.

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Of youth the notice to engage,'

and again and again throughout the volume, we proceed to lay before our readers. another proof of our assertion, that this gentleman has certainly obtained his receipt for writing a Metrical Romance from the great Empiric in question:

Obedient to their king's command,

Forth from the tent the warlike band,
Barons and dukes, a splendid train,
Knights from each clime, renown to gain,
Spurred their proud coursers o'er the plain;
While cymbal, drum, and trumpet loud,
Announced their coming to the crowd.
Arranged the appointed lists around,
The din of arms and war notes sound,
The clash of swords, the neigh of steeds,
The prelude to adventurous deeds.
While, charming oft the gazer's eye,
Blazoned, o'er rich pavilions, fy
A thousand streamers to the view,
"Various in shape, device, and hue."
On scaffolds, richly-cinctured, sate
Matrons and maids of lineage great,
Robed in their ornaments of state.
And, through the range of tents, descried,
On palfreys gay, in ermined pride,

High-titled dames were seen to ride.'—

Passing numerous opportunities of exemplifying still farther the justice of our remark in this canto, we advance to the episode in the second.

After the council at the Spanish court, recorded above in Mr. Belfour's advertisement, Bernardo sets out on his journey to Pampeluna, where he is to announce to Charlemagne the change in Alphonso's resolutions. His parting with his mistress Olympia, it seems, is not so tender on his side as it might be wished, since the knight had been enticed some time before by a sorceress in the forest of Ardennes to the Fountain of Forgetfulness, &c. &c.; all which is very stale indeed. However, the knight pursues his way, and finds (of course) a naked lady tied to a tree. Two giants come out of the wood, and Bernardo (like Thumb or Bobadil) kills them both:-"Twenty more, kill them all."-The lady is

2

grateful,

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