Any Lord Rudigar the Dane' may listen, if he pleases, since we are at strife with him and his nation, but we hope that our friends will be better employed.

Art. 21. The Fantoccini; or the Great Public Puppet-Show, as exhibited by Siguior Tintaraboloso; described in a Poetical Epistle from Griffith Llewellyn to his Cousin, Rice ap Shinkins, with illustrative Notes, historical and critical. By the Curate of Aberistwith. 12mo. 25. 6d. Boards. Maxwell and Co.

1809.

From the introduction and the commencement of this piece, we expected something similar in humour to Simkin's letters to his dear brother in Wales: but we soon found that the writer was unable to keep up the ball, and forgot his plan of exhibiting living characters under classic names. What have the Good Man and the Good Woman to do with Augustus, Alcibiades, and Mark Anthony? or where is the propriety of bringing in the Union, or the marriage of John Bull with Madam Erin, after a description of a modern fine Lady? Never were puppets so badly assorted; and the general effect is tame and flat in the extreme. The fable,' we are told in the title, has a moral' but in a great portion of these verses we can perceive no fable to which any moral can be attached, and only downright plain sailing in very plain verse. If our readers can discern anything in the following representation of the Good Man, that is calculated for the Great Public Puppet-Show, they have more penetration than we can claim:

He wav'd his wand, and at his call,

We were surpris'd to view,
A cobler sitting in his stall,

And mending an old shoe.

He stitch'd, and sung, like larks in June,
That make the welkin ring,
And beat his lapstone to the tune,

While thus we heard him sing:

«The rich, and great, I envy not,
Their titles, or their toys,

For sweet content hath bless'd my cot
With calmer, surer joys.

"My wife, tho' but an homely dame,
Is like the honey'd bee;
My girls are growing up the same,
The boys are all like me.

"We are not plagu'd with useless wealth,
Nor have we much to spare,
Yet we have competence, and health,
And wholesome daily fare.

"I work for all the village round,
And labour with good will,
If once a week I earn a pound,
And shoes want mending still.

"On Sunday, in our best array,
With pious folk we join,

And sometimes bring with us away,
A neighbour poor, to dine.
"I ponder not on future ills,
Which never may come nigh,
Content, if I can pay my bills,
And lay a little by.

"Tho' we have neither gold, nor lands,

We have no cause to rue,

While wife, and I, have each two hands,

And there is work to do."

Who would ever think of meeting with a plain country-cobler in the Great Public Puppet-Show?

Art. 22. The Battle of the Blocks, an heroic Poem, in three Cantos. By the Author of the Fantoccini. 8vo. IS. Maxwell and Co. The state-duellists, who are the Blocks in this mock epic, are compared to reeling ninepins' which knock each other down.' It is the aim of the poet to hold the principals in this unseemly conflict up to public scorn and derision; and if laughing at ministerial cabals and blunders would palliate the miseries which they occasion, we should recommend the productions of the satiric muse for sale in every market town of the empire: but of late Folly in high places has become too outrageous, to be affected and restrained by wit and rhyme. Our enemies may laugh, but we ought to weep.

This poet's indignation, however, is too feeble to express the public feeling; and even when he does his best, he is too languid for the occasion. His description of the failure of the Scheldt expedition (the cause of the quarrel between Mr. Canting and Lord Castaway) is not the worst part of the poem: but even this has not much merit :

• Thus baffled, wasted, their retreat review,

Like pallid spectres, drench'd with midnight dew!
Not twenty ships, nor towns, nor bulwark'd holds
They take-but twenty thousand colds!
With fevers burnt, or shivering agues chill'd,
Diseases, not their foes, the warriours kill'd.
Ah, mad exploit ! to send the young, the brave,
To seek an hospital, or find a grave.
Unlaurell'd Gen'rals sneak away to Court,
And Crowded Transports bring the sick to port;
The sad disgrace awakes the public mind,
And gathering murmurs float on every wind;
The beggar'd country mourns the bitter cost
Of credit, men, and treasure madly lost.'

The false quantities of Aristides and Alcibiades must not be

tolerated.

Art. 23. Poems on various Subjects, by Henry Richard Wood, Esq. Crown 8vo. 58. Boards. Baldwins, &c. 1809.

We are sometimes intreated for indulgence on account of the youth of an author, and sometimes invited to compassionate his age and infirmities; and while one silences us by pleading that he is still poorer in purse than in genius, another alleges so respectable a motive for publication, that we can only wish the general indulgence to keep pace with his expectations. Perhaps scarcely any work can be found which will not admit an apology, but we sigh for such as require none.

In the present instance, Mr. Wood offers with much diffidence his youth' and inexperience' as palliations for the defects of his poems; and though modesty unaccompanied by merit is but a negative virtue, which silence best exemplifies, yet, when we find arry beauties in a work, the author's modesty induces us to hope for his future improvement. Mr. Wood's poetry is harmonious, and his language is elegant but his writings display a melancholy and morbid sensibility, which has been nurtured by the study of Petrarch and the minor Italian poets.-We are almost tired of sentimental and reasoning Lilies but his lines on Fountain's Abbey are pleasing; the idea of the Anacreontic at the end of the book is good; and the fifth Sonnet, on the affection with which we look back to our past years, is remarkably well conceived and expressed. We shall transcribe it :

• SONNET V.

Why do those years which long, long since have pass'd,
More joyous than the present hours appear?

Say, were they chill'd by no unkindly blast,
Sad with no sigh, polluted with no tear?
Yes! ere they fled, they felt Misfortune's storms,
And like the present, had their sorrows too.
"Tis Fancy, fruitful in her airy forms,

That decks them in a garb they never knew:
Fancy, unfettered by that clay-link'd chain,
Which ever mingling with our present joys,
The purest charm of intellect destroys:
Thus foolish man seeks happiness in vain,
Who striving the Reality to find,

Knows but its form by traces left behind.'

Art. 24. Modern Proselytism, a poetical Sketch. 8vo. IS. Sher

wood and Co.

This sketch is so very faint, that the purpose of the artist is scarcely intelligible. He courts the Muse to help him to be satirical, but he addresses his prayers surdis auribus.

Art. 25. A solemn, sentimental, and reprobating Epistle to Mrs. Clarke. By Peter Pindar, Esq. 4to. 1s. 6d. Walker.

Art. 26. A Second Epistle to Mrs. Clarke. By Peter Pindar, Esq. 4to. Is. 6d. Walker.

Here is our friend P. P. about Mrs. Clarke's house; and never was so young a settuagenaire. If we may judge from the vigor and sportiveness of his muse, he has no furrows and wrinkles. The field for sport, which

the

the curious exhibition in the last session of parliament opened to the satiric muse, is exactly adapted to P. P.'s taste; and the dramatis persona of the Duke and Darling comedy pass in ludicrous review before this modern Momus. He has given to the exhibition that effect which his comic colouring is known to produce; and we owe to him, as on former occasions, the praise of having the power of fun, as well as the power of song. Does he, in the following prophecy, founded on the known fickleness of public opinion, seriously intend for once in his life to speak glad-tidings to the Court? No, the rogue is sly as usual; all ironing, we fear :

Yes, shall the HERO to his rank return,

While HATE shall foam in vain, and ENVY burn;
And spite of thy poor fabricated story,

Reblaze the sun of military glory!

'Tis but a passing cloud obscures his ray;
At most the darkness of a short-liv'd day:
The BIRD OF Jove, by an unlucky ball,
May lose some feathers of his wings, and fall;
Awhile may feed on snails, and hop the ground,
Till time renews his plumes, and cures his wound;
Then with new vigour imp'd, he mounts the wind,
And leaves the groveling tribes of earth behind;
Sublime he soars, scarce conscious of the blow,
And darts contempt upon the world below.
He comes, the HERO comes, and in his might
And cloath'd with terror, puts his foes to flight.
Thus, once I saw a country BULL, at ring,
Break, in his rage, the rope with sudden spring;
Coblers, and Butchers, Taylors fall or fly,
While hats, caps, wigs, and aprons mount the sky;
Sport of the winds o'er trees and chimnies borne,
That prov'd the prowess of his head and horn!
ENCHANTRESS, yes, for oracles I tell,
The youth shall rise and mock thy ev'ry spell,
Stamp with eternal infamy thy name,

Mock thy dark wiles, and cover thee with shame.
Then heed the ticklish humours of the times,

Tho' vengeance loiter, it may catch thy crimes.
In spite of those two fascinating eyes,
The youth, in awful majesty, may rise;
Lift his bold arm, that e'en the thunder dreads,
And tear, perhaps, thy tender form to shreds:
Thus have I seen, with moralizing look,
Cabbage and turnip-tops obstruct a brook;
By calm degrees, up swells the chrystal flood,
Superior rising, not to be withstood;

It bursts the boundary, with furious sweep,
And whelming drowns the garbage in the DEEP."

As it is no unusual event, in these enlightened and evangelical days, for demireps, who are on the decline of trade, to turn devotees, P.P.

Ff3

addresse

addresses to his Fair-Sinner-correspondent a few rhimes,' by way of comment on the times,' in which the regenerated rogues of GRACE obtain a full share of ridicule. The saying ascribed to Whitfield, "Come to Christ the dirtier the better," probably helped the poet to the outlines of his picture:

The MAN whose soul the blacker vices taint,

Now, for Heav'ns glory, makes a d-'d good SAINT!
Thus, heads of WHITINGS, grac'd with modest light,
Stink first, and then illuminate the night.'

Whether he soars or sinks, (he seldom does the latter,) P. P. is always himself, and scorns to be indebted to any fund but his own. Art. 27. Marmion travestied; a Tale of modern Times. By Peter Pry, Esq. 8vo. pp. 277. 9s. Boards. Tegg 1809. According to the popular notion of a travesty, which commonly signifies the degradation of a dignified style by a caricature-copy, we should doubt whether the poem of Marmion be susceptible of that humiliating process, since it is scarcely possible for any burlesque to outdo the doggrel character which prevails through the larger proportion of its narrative. Qui procumbit bumi, non habet unde cadat. Instead, however, of clothing the same subject in a different garb, after the example of Scarron and Cotton, the present author, appropriating the same language to a different subject, has rehearsed his Tale of modern. Times' in the same metre, and, for aught that we know, in the same number of stanzas, lines, and words, which were employed in Mr. Scott's hobbling heroics. That gentleman's introductions to the several cantos are also imitated, but with less exactness. The first of them, in which the border-minstrel judged it necessary to apologize to the son of the right honourable George Rose, for bestowing a few ill-turned phrases of niggardly panegyric on the late Mr. Fox, is here addressed to Sir Francis Burdett, and the rest to other distinguished political characters; except the last, which is assigned to Lord Ellenborough, and turns on the too celebrated suit, Wright v. Wardle. These introductions are without point, and are actually inferior to the originals. Peter Pry's story is a kind of patchwork, collected from various circumstances that appeared on the late investigation before the House of Commons, in the recent trial in the Court of King's Bench, and in the newspapers, respecting the suppressed Memoirs: a considerable part is however supplied by the poet's imagination. It is rather tedious, on the whole, though not without occasional gleams of pleasantry. We quote the parody on a striking passage in the original; that in which Mr. Scott, after a burst of genuine poetry, indulges his antiquarian readers with a fac simile of Sybil Gray's imaginary black-letter epitaph:

‹ O, Woman ! in the hour of strife,
The plague, the torment of our life,
And variable as the shade,
By the light quivering aspen made;
Whenever gifts there are enow
A condescending creature thou!

Scarce