PRINCE'S HOURS WITH THE MUSES.

THIS little volume contains a variety of verses, tripping, harmo- nious, and possessing a remarkable degree of elegance when the circumstances and condition of the author are considered. But the history of the poet, with which the volume opens, is more extraordinary than the poems ; for they are somewhat wanting in

strength and raciness, displaying rather the average excellence to which imitation and cultivation will raise a poetical temper- ament, than that instinctive sense of poetical genius which "looks

round on Nature with the eye which Nature only bestows upon a poet," and would pour forth its impressions in some form or other though ignorant of all preceding verses, and even though verse had never been.

JOHN CRITCIILEY PRINCE was born at Wigan, in 1808 ; and was taught the rudiments of reading and writing at the Sunday school

of a Baptist chapel. At nine years old he was put to his father's trade of making reeds for weavers, and kept to work for fourteen or sixteen hours a day, at what is described as a tedious and mono-

tonous employment. The father of PRINCE appears to have been

a harsh and brutal person, who no sooner discovered his son's love of reading than be sought to repress it by forbidding the practice altogether ; so that the boyish lover of literature had to read by stealth, when the family were asleep, by the light of a " slacked fire," or as be could. The father also seems to have been, like many of his class, (whose poverty almost renders economy impossible,) an

improvident and unsettled person : " distress and embarrassment" took him to Manchester, in 1821, in search of employment ; Man-

chester he soon after left for Stockport ; shortly he returned again ; and then in a little time "pecuniary difficulties" drove him to Hyde.

During all this period, young PRINCE, as may readily be imagined, "dragged on a miserable life" : but he seems to have managed to peruse some -works of DE FOE, Mrs. RADCLIFFE, MONK LEWIS, and BYRON; which last "he read with the most intense and rap- turous delight." He also made acquaintance with a German vete- ran, who had seen service and been wounded at Waterloo, and whose tales of war and legends of fatherland made a deep impres- sion upon the youthful mind of the poet. Before be was nineteen, JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE married a " neebor lassie" • and as he was still doomed to work for his father,

things went on badly enough, especially with an increasing family ; though his wife appears to be an industrious woman, who during part of their struggles maintained the whole family by her labour

as a hand-loom-weaver. In 1830, the hopes of PRINCE were ex,

cited by reports of the want of English artisans in France. Leav- ing his wife to maintain herself and her three children till he could

find employment, he started for St. Quentin in Picardy : but the Revolution of the Barricades broke out whilst he was on his road. He, however, went on, and reached St. Quentin.

" Here he was doomed to disappointment ; the Revolution had paralyzed every thing. Business was at a stand-still, and no employment for him was to be had. He knew not now what to do; whether to return home, his hopes frustrated and money wasted, or to proceed to the great seat of manufacture, Mulbausen, on the Upper Rhine. He chose the latter course; and accordingly wended his way thitherwards, by the way of Paris, where he staid eight days ; in which time he visited the Theatres, the church of Notre Dame, Pere la Chaise, the Palais Royal, the Luxemburg, the Tuileries, the Gallery of the

Louvre, ascended the column in the Place Vendome, and viewed other ' lions' of the French metropolis; till at length, finding his viaticum, so small at be- ginning, dwindling to a most diminutive bulk, he proceeded forward, through the province of Champagne, to his destination.

" On arriving at Mulhausen, he found trade little better than at St. Quentin. Many manufactories were shut up, and the people in great distress. His means were completely exhausted. In a land of strangers, ignorant of the

language, with the exception of the few words he had picked up on the road, he was indeed forlorn. Without the means to return, and in the hope of a re- vival in trade, he remained here five months in a state of comparative starva- tion; sometimes being two entire days without food. During this time some trifling relief was afforded him by the generous kindness of Mr. Andrew Keehlin, a manufacturer, the Mayor of the town. Finding that his hopes were fruitless, and the desire of again seeing his wife and children becoming insupportable, he at length determined to under- take the task of walking home, through a strange land, for many hundred miles, without a guide and without money. Accordingly, in the middle of a

Severe winter, (January 1831,) with an ill-furnished knapsack on his back and ten sous in his pocket, he set off from Mulbausen to return to Hyde in Lan- cashire, with a heart light as the treasure in his exchequer. • • • " He journeyed through Strasburg, and admired its splendid cathedral; through Nancy, Verdun, Rheims, Luneville, Chalons, and most of the principal cities, &c. that lay near his route, till be reached Calais once more ; obtained from the British Consul a passage across the Channel, and again set his foot on his native soil. During this toilsome journey he subsisted on the charity of the few English residents whom be found on his way. He lay in four different hospitals for the night, but not once in the open air, as he did afterwards in his own country. The first night after his arrival he applied for food and shelter at a workhouse in Kent, and was thrust into a miserable garret, with the roof sloping to the floor ; where he was incarcerated along with twelve others—eight men and four women, chiefly Irish—the lame, the halt, and the blind. * • *

" Released from this lazar-house, he proceeded onwards, pennyless and shoe- less, towards London, begging in the daytime and lying in the open fields at night. When he reached London he had been the whole day without food. To allay the dreadful but to him then familiar cravings of hunger, he went to Rag Fair, and taking off his waistcoat, sold it for eightpence. With the proceeds of this sale he bought a penny-loaf to mitigate his hunger, and four- penny-worth of writing-paper, with which he entered a tavern, and, calling for a pint of porter, proceeded to the writing of as much of his own poetry as his paper would contain, and this amid the riot and noise of a number of coal- heavers and others.

" As soon as be had done his task, he went round to a number of booksellers, hoping to sell his manuscript for a shilling or two ; but the hope was, alas ! vain. The appearance and manners of the famishing hard, to these mercantile men, were against him : he could not succeed in finding taste for his poetry or sympathy for his sufferings. • • •

" At length, by untiring perseverance, he reached Hyde ; having slept by the way in barns, vagrant-offices, under haystacks, and in miserable lodging- houses, with ballad-singers, match-sellers, and mendicants; fully realizing the adage of Shakspere, that ' misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed- fellows.' On his route from London, he ground corn at Birmingham, sang ballads at Leicester, lay under the trees in Sherwood Forest near Nottingham, lodged in a vagrant-office at Derby, made his bivouac at Bakewell in Derby- shire in a ' lock-up,' and finally reached Hyde ; but found, alas ! it contained for him a home no longer.

" Whilst poverty had thus brought suffering upon him when in quest of better means to provide for his family, it had also brought wo and privation upon his wife and babes. Unable to provide for her children by her labour, she had been compelled to apply for pariah-aid, and was, in consequence, removed . to the poor-house of Wigan. Atter a night's rest, Prince hurried off to that town, and brought them back to Manchester ; where he took a garret, without food and clothes, without bed and furniture, or an article of use of any descrip- tion. On a bundle of straw did this wretched family of man and wife and three children lie for several months."

For some time after this his wife was the chief support of the family ; but Prince at length got employment as a reed-maker.

" He subsequently returned to Hyde, and obtained a situation in a cotton- mill ; where he has since remained. His labour is of a very heavy and harass- ing kind, and but poorly rewarded, not yielding him more than eighteen shil- lings per week when fully employed. Those who have families to maintain by hard labour and on scant means, will know that the poet has not yet ob- tained leisure and comfort.

" During this series of years, he has written his poetry at all times and under all circumstances. The gratification of this passion was always a source of solace, and enabled him to revel in pleasure in an ideal, even when misery was nipping him keenly in the real world. At different times he has contributed to the Manchester newspapers, and to three of its local periodicals—the Micro- scope, the Phoenix, and the Companion; all of which latter are now immured in ' the tomb of the Capulets."

From a man who had seen and suffered so much as PRINCE we should have expected poetry of a different kind—more rugged, more vehement, more indignant, and perhaps less imitative. Not but that the poetical feeling or temperament must be vivid within him to force its way through so many obstacles ; but his tone of mind and mode of treatment are not original. Strictly speaking, indeed, he is not true ; for his verses are often the result of specu- lation rather than of observation and experience—he is abstract, not individual If he writes, for instance, on the poor, or on the slave, PRINCE in his garret does not treat his topic in a manner essentially different from what a fine lady might do sitting in a boudoir. His poetry is not so much like a poor man's, as a rich man's meditating on the poor : in short, he is more of a rheto- rician than a poet—has a sort of dread that plainness and poverty are inconsistent with poesy, (which for the "gorgeous pall of tragedy" they are, no doubt,) and has yet to learn the potency of nature and truth.

These remarks are founded upon the poems whose subjects have a reference to the author's own position. Such topics, how- ever, by no means form the bulk of the volume before us : many of the verses are occasional, many general; and these frequently ex- hibit a high degree of merit, especially considering the circum- stances under which they were composed. Of these verses the de- scriptive are the best : and to description we think the genius of Panes inclines,—using the word genius in the sense of innate, or that to which we are driven by an inbred motive. Here, from the Songs of the Seasons, is an example of this kind.

THE VOICE OF AUTUMN.

Thou lonely man of grief and pain, By lawless power opprest,

Burst from thy prison, rend thy chain—

I come to make thee blest.

I have no springtide buds and flowers,

I have no summer bees and bowers; But, oh! I have some pleasant hours To soothe thy soul to rest.

Plenty o'er all the quiet land Her varied vesture weaves, And flings her gifts with liberal hand, To glad the heart that grieves. Along the Southern mountain-steeps The vine its purple nectar weeps ; While the bold peasant proudly reaps The wealth of golden sheaves.

Forth with the earliest march of morn

He bounds with footstep free, He plucks the fruit, he binds the corn, Till night steals o'er the lea Beneath the broad ascending moon, He carries home the welcome boon, And sings some old remembered tune, With loud and careless glee.

Then come before my reign is past, Ere darker hours prevail, Before the forest-leaves are cast, And wildly strew the gale : There's splendour in the day-spring yet, There's glory when the sun is set, There's beauty when the stars are met Around their pilgrim pale.

The lark, at length, bath left the skies ; The throttle sings alone; And far the vagrant cuckoo flies, To seek a kinder zone: But other music still is here, Though fields are bare and woods are sere, Where the lone robin warbles clear His soft and plaintive tone.

While heaven is blue and earth is green, Come at my earnest call, Ere winter saddens all the scene Beneath his snowy pall. The fitful wailing of the woods, The solemn roar of deepening floods, Sent forth from Nature's solitudes, Proclaim my coming fall.