Their vestments flow'd, majestically pure,
Rejecting splendour; hymning as they mov'd,
They sung of Cyrus, glorious in his rule
O'er Sardis rich, and Babylon the proud;
Cambyses, victor of Egyptian Nile;
Darius, fortune-thron'd; but flatt'ry tun'd
Their swelling voice to magnify his son,
The living monarch, whose stupendous piles
Combin'd the Orient and Hesperian worlds,

Who pierc'd mount Athos, and o'erpower'd in fight
Leonidas of Sparta. Then succeed

Ten coursers whiter than their native snows
On wintry Media's fields; Nicæan breed,
In shape to want no trappings, none they wore
To veil their beauty; docile they by cords
Of silk were led, the consecrated steeds
Of Horomazes.

By the aid of a laborious enumeration of circumstances, most of them historically true, our author has succeeded in presenting to the mind, an animated description of the splendid scene, which clothed the shores of the straits of Salamis, immediately before the battle. It opens the sixth book:

"Bright pow'r, whose presence wakens on the face
Of nature all her beauties, gilds the floods,

The crags and forests, vine-clad hills and fields,

*

O sun! thou, o'er Athenian tow'rs,

The citadel and fanes in ruin huge,

Dost, rising now, illuminate a scene

More new, more wondrous, to thy piercing eye,.

Than ever time disclos'd. Phaleron's wave
Presents three thousand barks in pendants rich;
Spectators, clust'ring like Hymettian bees,
Hang on the burden'd shrouds, the bending yards,
The reeling masts; the whole Cecropian strand,
Far as Eleusis, seat of mystic rites,

Is throng'd with millions, male and female race
Of Asia and of Libya, rank'd on foot,
On horses, camels, cars. Egaleos tall,
Half down his long declivity, where spreads
A mossy level, on a throne of gold
Displays the king, environ'd by his court.
In oriental pomp; the hill behind,

By warriors cover'd, like some trophy huge,
Ascends in varied arms and banners clad;
Below the monarch's feet th' immortal guard,
Line under line, erect their gaudy spears;

Th' arrangement, shelving downward to the beach,
Is edg'd by chosen horse. With blazing steel
Of Attic arms encircled, from the deep
Psyttalia lifts her surface to the sight,
Like Ariadne's heav'n-bespangling crown,
A wreath of stars; beyond, in dread array,
The Grecian fleet, four hundred gallies, fill
The Salaminian straits; barbarian prows
In two divisions point to either mouth
Six hundred brazen beaks of tow'r-like ships,
Unwieldy bulks; the gently-swelling soil
Of Salamis, rich island, bounds the view.
Along her silver-sanded verge array'd,
The men at arms exalt their naval spears
Of length terrific. All the tender sex,
Rank'd by Timothea, from a green ascent
Look down in beauteous order on their sires,
Their husbands, lovers, brothers, sons, prepar'd
To mount the rolling deck. The younger dames
In bridal robes are clad; the matrons sage
In solemn raiment, worn on sacred days;
But white in vesture like their maiden breasts,
Where Zephyr plays, uplifting with his breath
The loosely-waving folds, a chosen line
Of Attic graces in the front is plac'd;
From each fair head the tresses fall, entwin'd
With newly-gather'd flowrets; chaplets gay
snowy hand sustains; the native curls,

The

O'ershading half, augment their pow'rful charms;
While Venus, temper'd by Minerva, fills
Their eyes with ardour, pointing ev'ry glance
To animate, not soften. From on high
Her large controlling orbs Timothea rolls,
Surpassing all in stature, not unlike

In majesty of shape the wife of Jove,
Presiding o'er the empyreal fair."

One of the chief faults of Glover, in the Athenaid, is the general carelessness with which he leaves half-wrought images to shift for themselves.-For the most part, the poem reads like a huge and overgrown argument to an epic-or appears like a receptacle for hints and memoranda of passages and scenes, interwoven with the chronicle of the events, which the poet afterwards intended to work up. If we could conceive Glover so familiar with the use of blank verse, as to write it with as much facility as prose, we should have no hesitation in concluding that the work, which now purports to be an epic poem, was nothing more than a mass of materials, compiled in the course of some years, for subsequent use. Independent of the harsh imitation of a classical construction of his language, the versification commonly "loiters into prose," and is totally divested of that measured sonorousness which we find in the Leonidas. Sometimes, indeed, we have finished passages, where the metre is melodious, and the images brought out, as if they were already finished for the future poem, which we have supposed the author to have been contemplating—of these, we shall give some specimens, premising that we consider them as, perhaps, the most beautiful parts of the work.

"A pleasing stillness on the water sleeps ;
The land is hush'd; from either host proceeds
No sound, no murmur. With his precious charge
Embark'd, Sicinus gently steers along;

The dip of oars in unison awake

Without alarming silence; while the Moon,

From her descending, horizontal car,

Shoots lambent silver on the humid blades

Which leave the curling flood. On carpets soft
Sandauce's babes devoid of sorrow lie,

In sweet oblivious innocence compos'd

To smiling slumber.

But the mother's breast

Admits no consolation."

And again:

The sounding way

Is hard and hoar; crystalline dew congeal'd
Hath tipt the spiry grass; the waters, bound
In sluggish ice, transparency have lost;
No flock is bleating on the rigid lawn,
No rural pipe attunes th' inclement air;
No youths and damsels trip the choral round
Beneath bare oaks, whose frost-incrusted boughs
Drop chilling shadows; icicles invest

The banks of rills, which, grating harsh in strife
With winter's fetters, to their dreary sides

No passenger invite."

In the following, also, there is much suavity of versification, as well as great beauty of local description:

་

"In native windings from his Lydian fount
As various flow'd Meander, here along
A level champaign, daisy-painted meads,
Or golden fields of Ceres, here through woods
In green arcades projecting o'er his banks,
There shut in rock, which irritates the stream,
Here by low hamlets, there by stately towns,
Till he attained the rich Magnesian seat;
Thence with augmented fame and prouder floods
Roll'd down his plenteous tribute to the main:
So through the mazes of his fortune winds
In artless eloquence th' expressive strain
Of Haliartus, from his peasant state
To scenes heroic."

This is, also, a most highly poetical night-piece; the scene of which lies between the two hostile camps of Greece and Persia.

"The Sun was set; th' unnumber'd eyes of Heav'n

Thin clouds envelop'd; dusky was the veil

Of night, not sable; placid was the air;

The low-ton'd current of Asopus held
No other motion than his native flow,
Alluring Aristides in a walk
Contemplative to pace the stable verge
Attir'd in moss. The hostile camp he views,
Which by Masistius' vigilance and art
With walls of wood and turrets was secur'd.
For this the groves of Jupiter supreme
On Hypatus were spoil'd, Teumessian brows,

Mesabius, Parnes, were uncover'd all.
Square was th' enclosure, ev'ry face emblaz'd
With order'd lights. Each elevated tent
Of princely satraps, and, surmounting all,
Mardonius, thine, from coronets of lamps
Shot lustre, soft'ning on the distant edge,
Of wide Platean fields. A din confus'd,
Proclaim'd barbarians; silent was the camp
Of Greece."

The beauty of the following landscape is of so fine an order, as almost to make us repent of our characterization of Glover's feelings for the beauties of nature, as in some sort suburban:

"Silver Phoebe spreads

A light, reposing on the quiet lake,
Save where the snowy rival of her hue,
The gliding Swan, behind him leaves a trail
In luminous vibration.* Lo! an isle

*Mr. Wordsworth most probably had his eye on the first lines of the above obscure quotation, in composing the following lovely and majestic passage. We do not mean to compare the two extracts; for it will be observed, that the Swan of Glover is only one object among many, lightly touched off in the landscape, though with a pen of real genius; while the noble "creature" of the other poet is an elaborate and finished picture.

"Fair is the swan, whose majesty prevailing
O'er breezeless water, on Locarno's lake,
Bears him on, while proudly sailing
He leaves behind a moon-illumin'd wake:
Behold! the mantling spirit of reserve
Fashions his neck into a goodly curve;
An arch thrown back between luxuriant wings
Of whitest garniture, like fir-tree boughs
To which, on some unruffled morning, clings
A flaky weight of winter's purest snows!
Behold! as with a gushing impulse, heaves
That downy prow, and softly cleaves
The mirror of the crystal flood,
Vanish inverted hill, and shadowy wood,
And pendant rocks, where'er, in gliding state,
Winds the mute creature without visible mate
Or rival, save the Queen of night