15 NOVEMBER 1828, Page 10

ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH POETS FOR 1829.

LITERARY SPECTATOR.

WE have been slow to acknowledge the contributions which taste and genius have lately made to our means of delectation at this ungenial season ; because, to enjoy them aright and appreciate them justly, demand a leisurely perusal and a thoughtful examina- tion. They are agremens that should be husbanded for November nights, not hastily turned over and cast away half rifled. The beauty of everything that has beauty will thus have time to leave its impression ; and among a variety of odours, each particular one may be nicely discriminated. All parties gain—the reader in pleasure, the poet in estimation, and the critic in candour. We might otherwise have joined in the sweeping sentence of medi- ocrity with which the idle and the undiseerning are wont to cover their own want of discrimination. As it is, these volumes appear to us creditable to the taste and cultivation of the country. There is not in them the hand of a poet of the first class ; but what fabled Augustan age of Britain could have produced so long a series of Anthologies replete with feeling, taste, and beauty both of sentiment and language ? Time was when never a month passed without being signalized by a new work of WORDSWORTH, SCOTT, BYRON, CRABBE, CAMP- BELL, MOORE, SHELLEY, or SOUTHEY. Of this immortal band,

two are gone to their home ; the genius of a third has been diverted into a new path ; and the rest are either silent, or strike the lyre with a listless, indifferent hand. To this great race of bards has succeeded a numerous generation, who, to their predecessors, are as rills to the mighty parent stream : but their waters, though scanty, are clear, and their banks are enamelled with flowers. The extraordinary tide has retired, but the water-mark remains higher than at any former period : the standard of poetical merit is raised, and a better poetical taste universally diffused. The meanest production which these sumptuous volumes contain, would be a gem—a star in the pages of that HAYLEY who once swayed the sceptre of Parnassus in these realms. Our annual collections, moreover, merit consideration on a

ground independent of their intrinsic value. Be their quantum of talent what it may, they are the channels through which the main current of British poesy flows at present, and the flood is deepening and broadening every year. It is not therefore to a set of boudoir and drawing-room ornaments that we invite the reader's attention ; —they present the main part of the conceptions, thoughts, and dreams of the poetically inspired among us during the past year. As every volume, with its own peculiar additions, presents many names common to all, a separate notice of each would beget dis- traction and repetition. Our division therefore shall be one of Authors, not of Annuals, which are only repositories ; and, yielding precedence to age, we shall begin with him who beguiled our grandmothers of their tears.

HENRY MACKENZIE. " Recantation "—a poem so called, in

Friendship's Offering—is a tribute to the memory of one lost be- fore she was duly valued ; and reminded us once of COWPER'S lines " On receiving his mother's portrait," which surpass what- ever affectionate regret ever breathed from the lips of a son. MAC- KENZIE'S Amanda seems to have been to the devout author of La Roche, what GIBBONS "Aunt Judith" was to the embryo his- torian of Rome : and these are not the only two who might have traced to a similar source the stream of a genius that in after years delighted a nation. The poem will he read with interest, for there are few families without their Amanda, and none without respect for MACKENZIE.

THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

" Her looks su gay o'er nature away, Frae bonny blue een sac mild an' mellow, Saw naething sae sweet in nature's array, Though clad in the morning's gowden yellow."

God-a-mercy, old heart ! thou speakest still both cheerily and ten- derly. The glance of beauty can set, it seems, even the sexagenarian a " quaking and quavering." It is hard to say whether the sap flows freest in Ettrick's Shepherd or Ambrose's. See " A Song;' in Friendship's Offering, p. 253. The lament of a poor girl, un- happy in her love, at p. 415 of the same, has a true touch of the humble old pathetic ballad : - " Now lock my chamber-door, father,

And say you left me sleeping."—

But it is surprising what havoc a wrong word will make in a simple poem ; it is like a false note in fine music :-

" A slumber deep may ease my smart, Or partially reprieve it"—

Of these words, the first two are defective in simplicity, and the last in propriety ; and altogether they break the charm, by ob- truding on you the idea of the versifier. Ballads should be tried as carefully as a housewife rings the china or delf she would pur- chase, and the heart should assist the ear in the proof. The con- cluding lines, however, make amends :—

" A quiet sleep within the grave

Is all for which I weary."

The farewell, a few pages after, to a " Beloved young Friend," seems to identify her with the hapless lover in the ballad, and among some wordier stanzas has one or two lines of feeling :-

" Oh ! the last look is hard to bear

Even of a stock or old grey stone."

It is certain, that in the parting of BURNS'S mantle, some strips

have fallen to HOGG. In the Anniversary is a longer and more

ambitious poem, entitled the " Carle of Invertime," not very happy in its conception, which is partly allegorical, but flowing in spirited verse, whose measure is agreeably varied, and having many beau- ties characteristic of its author's seraphic imagination. As, for example, the guardian genius having consigned her venerable pro- tegee to the " grim gudeman of Invertime," who sits at the " gate of a strange countree,"—

— " gave her form to the breeze away, That came from the realms of immortal day, And sang her hymns far over the same."

The reveries of a poet child are delightfully painted in a few lines of a short poem called the " Minstrel Boy," in Friendshly.s. Of " There was a time," says the Shepherd, " When I, like thee, on a summer day Would toil at the leap, the race, the stone, Tf ith none to beat but myself alone ;"

and when he " lilted his songs," till the self-imagined Orpheus verily believed the fairies peeped at him over the fell," and the lamb ceased nibbling the sward to eye him ;

" That the plover came nigh with his corslet brown, And the moor cock showed his scarlet crown : That I even beheld with reverence due, The goss-hawk droop his pinion blue, And the tear in the eye of .the good curlew."

Mrs. HEMANS is a poetess loved of all the devotional and pure in heart, and even of those who, without being either the one or the other, are not unsusceptible of such feelings. She takes her stand on the very confines of mortality heaven-ward ; and her garments have caught some rays of the lustre that beams from the Throne. Blended with devotion, is a tenderness which, if not ma- ternal, one would pronounce to be purer than aught that this earth may own ; and in treating of her poems we feel as though treading on holy ground—" Procul, 0 procul este profani !"—The charmed potency of the Amulet resides chiefly in the first page, which to

the text-

" Hark ! they whisper ! angels say, Sister spirit, come away"—

presents a pman as angelic as its prelude. It is the welcome home to heaven of one who, having long survived the rest of her family, had at last, like the wandering clove, found rest :—

" Over thine orphan head

The storm hath swept, as o'er a willow's bough : Come to thy father !—it is finished now; Thy tears have all been shed."

The Literary Souvenir has an invocation to a " Departed Spirit ;" but whether of parent, sister, or lover, though the last is probable, cannot be determined ; and every reader may apply it ac- cording to the tenour of his own feelings. The affectionate energy and the disconsolate spirit it bespeaks, recall Manfred to mind ; and show that pure feelings are susceptible of as passionate an

expression as the impure.

" Thine eye's last light was mine—the soul that shone Intensely, mournfully, thro' gathering haze ;— Di dst thou bear with thee to the shore unknown Nought of what lived in that long earnest nit;-.e?

Hear, hear and answer me.

The grave is silent—and the far-off sky And the deep midnight—silent all and lone."

The poetess—holy as she is—must have had Manfred's Astarte in mind,—" But thou wert silent all." There is something in the first stanza we have cited, that would be praised, if one could find appropriate terms : but the heart alone can do it justice—words are weak. A third piece in the Literary Souvenir, to the motto, " 0 sanctissima, 0 purissirna," completes the triad. It is the " Hymn of an Italian Girl," and exhibits the rarest conflict of piety and passion that ever agitated a breast divided between a mortal and an immortal love. The fluctuation of feeling is beautiful. In one stanza, the " Mother of Sorrows " is conjured, as having herself once known the " grief, the rive, the fear of Woman's soul," to aid her suppliant in quelling the excess of earthly love, which she fears will be made the means of chastening her heart; and in another, the "Holiest" is implored to guide and save the object of that

love :-

" There is a wandering bark

Bearing one from me o'er the restless wave."— But as we cannot give the whole, we will not mar its beauty by quoting less. When the English language shall be with the dead, this poem, or a fragment of it, shall from the students of British Anthology win for HEMANS the title of the Holy SAPPHO. " Second Sight" and " Themes for Song" are poems of great beauty; but the" Music of Yesterday"— though a "theme of song" one would have pronounced is:priori not ill adapted to the muse of Mrs. HEMANS—is a failure. The recollection of a strain of music—even the simplest—even of a chime heard in the calm of a Sabbath morning, or of the tinkling of a sheep-bell on the soli- tary side of a breezy mountain,—comes ever fraug-ht with the feel- ings, lonely, pensive, or rapturous, which the sounds and the scene themselves produced. They, and the sensations they create, can no more be said " to die—to perish," than any pleasurable ideas cherished in memory—the Angel's Call for example, or the Italian Girl's hymn, once and but once read—can be said to die—to perish. The poetess has bewildered herself in vague fancies ; and tne poem—it' our obtuser senses be not impervious to its charm— is words, et prcetereanthil. Yet one might read and pronounce it beautiful ; but question it more closely, and you will as vainly endeavour to reecho a sentiment or to catch an idea, as to find sense in the eloquence of a morning dream. CAROLINE BOWLES. In the Anniversary is a solitary poem with this signature, of a kind to make the reader regret that one who has so much power should have used it so sparingly. It is a description, in some respects fanciful, of the oppression under which the heart labours in the sultry, sullen, stifling atmosphere that precedes a storm ; and of the relief affbrded by the breaking and dispersion of the thunder-cloud. There is an awful solenety contrasted with pleasant images and agreeable sensations, worthy of a Byronian tempest. The head-stones and tombs in the church- yard have a ghastly glare,—the tall tree-tops—" albeit no breeze was felt"—utter a " shivering sound,"—a flash lights up the west- ern heaven—" and one long thunder-peal rolled echoing round:' " One long, long-echoing peal, and all was peace—

Cool rain. drops gemmed the herbage—large and few; And that dull vault of lead Disputing over head, Down beamed an eye of soft celestial blue.

" And up toward the heavenly portal sprang

A skylark, scattering off the feathery rain— Up from my very feet—

And oh ! how clear and sweet Rang through the fields of air his mounting strain."

GEO. DARLEY, Esq. To this name we owe some funereal stanzas in the Anniversary, the reading of which creates an emotion akin to what the sight of beauty herself, shrouded and coffined, might produce.

" Dead Beauty's eye is beamless all, Its glance as dull as hail."—

The sullen lip which no sweet thought curls now—the lily arms crossed on the neck of pearl—" the chaste, the careful girl !" —and the dead raven tresses stirred by the reckless wind—are beautifully commemorated. One stroke surpasses all the rest- " Coffin her up, and on the pall

Lay one white rirg in plume."

This poem, which is called the " Wedding Wake," is of very unequal merit, and is disfigured with some affectations. In the i

same volume, by the same hand, is a longer performance entitled the " Sorrows of Hope"—it should have been called the " Sorrows of Hope Deferred"—which, though somewhat inexplicable, and a failure on the whole, is indicative of talent. In particular there is a passage descriptive of the arcades, where " range the staid deer and trotting fawn," swept by a gallant train, with horn and hounds, and one solitary huntress in the midst, which is worthy of SCOTT :— " Along they flashed : I could not trace The clouded features of her face, Although I guessed it lovely fair; But as she passed, two rings of hair, Like twisted threads of matted gold, Behind each snowy ear were rolled LUD. COLQUHOUN, Esq. " The Dead "—a poem. whien should have been called a " A Mocking of the Dead." They are bid to unseal their eyes—to rise and look abroad on Nature ; whose sights and sounds—the spring flowers—southern breezes—wild bird's early song, and tender green of the sun-lit solitudes of the wood, are temptingly set forth :- " What! silent still? May none

Of these things win your praise, Not the smiling earth, nor the glittering sun, Nor the wild bird's sweetest lays ?"

We but half understand this. Perhaps the author himself only partially felt or but half conceived what it was he would be at. Or, perhaps, if' BvitoN had written it, we might have thought it had :t deeper sense, and modestly imputed our defect of perception to another cause.

JOHN CLARE is a general contributor, but a happy one only in Friendship's Offering; where are three sonnets, " Nature," "the Wren," and " Spring Morning," which paint sights and sounds familiar to the " Peasant "—who therefore paints them well- " Such as the wood Ieaves in disorder shook

By startled stock-dove's hasty flapping wings," &c.

" Spring Morning" is worthy of a poet of the elder day. It opens with the freshness of a Miltonic or a Shakspearian glimpse of Nature, like-

.. . . . the morn in russet mantle clad

'Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill."

BARRY CORNWALL. The " Temptation" would rise many de- ewes in estimation, should oblivion ever unhappily fall on " Faust.- , and spare this fragment. The merriment of Mordax is but a faint echo of Mephistophiles, so inimitably rendered by SHELLEY ; and the phantom, " round whose white neck winds a blood-red line," can be none but Beatrice—"Anon she'll shake it off." The " In- vocation to the Birds," though not twittered from the bill of one, is aerial enough for a merely human call. The nightingale and cuckoo are summoned with a pleasing and highly poetical mention of their attributes ; but what could lead the author to mar the effect of his feathery verse by an allusion to the disputes of philo- sophers?—Read ARISTOPHANES once again. The " Stanzas to Pasta," though they do not bespeak a nice sense and just appre elation of the character of the " rare Italian," have some fine lines.

" But thou !-last come at last and struck this heart of stone: And now out gushes without stint or measure The endless rapture- * Now, in thy voice, the mad Medea dies ;—

Now Desdemuna yields her gentle breath:— All things thou art by turns—from wrath to love,

From the queen eagle to the vestal dove."

JOHN MALCOLM Esq. has given us some poems of more fancy than feeling perhaps, but beautiful withal. The " Spirit's Land" has a notion that perfect joy, without an infusion of " sweet sor- row," would not be joy ; and that a " chastened woe" may even in heaven prompt the sigh, should the angelic harps haply ever stray on airs of earthly origin,— " And, like the vision of a dream,

Shed on the disembodied mind Of mortal life a dying gleam, And loved ones left behind."

The " Ship at Sea," presents ideas and fancies that might have passed through the mind of HESSANS, had she allowed her imagi- nation to brood on the subject ; though the structure of the verse and style of the composition are unlike her's. S. C. HALL The "Exile's Dream" breaks off with a desolate feeling which poor Robinson Crusoe must often have experienced in perfection, on waking on the shore of his desert island. — "I awoke—

To hear the ocean's never varied sound,

And the wild sea-mew, wheeling round and round—

A broken-hearted exile."

Is the author of " Solitary Hours, &c." whom a sprightly poem called the " Woodbine," shows to be an authoress,—unless indeed it was a gownsman on the Madingley-road, who fell into the ditch in the daring attempt to clutch the flagrant prize—the same with the author of " SolitaryWalks in Many Lands," to whom we owe a cha- racteristic address to a tribe of feathered travellers in Many Lands, which opens like a translation from the Greek anthology ?- " White-bosomed strangers, wandering tribes, that bring News to our isle."— T. K. HERVEY. With reference to " Carthage;' " Cleopatra," " Mount Carmel," &c.,with the change of a word, we may apply what PORSON said of a writer, to whom the author of these poems, when he wore a blue gown, was thought to bear no little resemblance,—that he spins the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his senti- ment. However, in the picture of a girl brooding on her " Morn- ing Dreams," or still dreaming, though awake, we recognize both fine-spun thread and staple too :- . " She has been dreaming, and her thoughts are still

On their far journey, in the land of dreams "...

ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq. We do not mean to say that no man has a right, who pleases, to inscribe verses to the Memory of the Princess CHARLOTTE ; or that it did not especially become the Lau- reate so to do ' • or that his lines are not creditable to his feelings, since they are highly so, and the two last more especially- " We mourn thee as a mother and a wife, And in our human nature feel the blow t"— But the " fair-haired daughter of the Isles" will go down to pos- terity in the works of another bard, who, like her whose early fate he pitied, now " sleeps well" too, and also in an early grave. We suppose it was in the line of his duty as Laureate, that the poet dedicated his poem to the Caledonian canal ; which in reality has broken, as many charms—cut up as many old associations— as the very steam-boats that ply on the secluded mountain lochs which it has connected and made accessible to all.

The Laureate's Epistle to ALLAN CUNNINGHAM—bating always its humour, which we lament, and its anger, which does not be- come one on whom " Time has laid its frore and monitory hand"— is so much to our taste, that we could wish, now that his imagina- tion must be flagging, he would, like HORACE, relax the reins and let his Pegasus amble-in the pedestrian pace of Sermones or moral poems. A series of moral epistles in blank verse—which, as SOUTHEY writes it, is the finest of all verse—would be a more grateful boon than the literary world has received since COWPER. There is a peculiarity in the lines relating to NAPOLEON and Mr.- DERDYK, the Dutch poet, that would have made us, if they had come insulated and without a name, assign them to BYRON.

" Napoleon asked him once with cold fixed look, Art thou then in the world of letters known ?'

And meeting his Imperial look with eye As little wont to turn away before The face of man, the Hollander replied, ' At least I have one that whereby I have There to be known deserved.' "

Epistle from Abbotsford. This is an agreeable piece, written in the good old measure of POPE—which, when written freely as DRYDEN and as BYRON wrote it, and as the author of this epistle writes, prefers a claim to priority of merit, which may compete with the best. We are sorry to find it in so little odour with the present generation of poets ; for, except this epistle, we do not recollect a single specimen worth mentioning in the volumes before us. The poem in question has an extrinsic interest derived from the subject, and from the fact which is apparent, of its being written by one intimate in the circle of which it treats :- " High streaming in the breeze that sweeps their shade,

When the kind Bard's at home, his flag's displayed; And by and o'er it, dearer far to you, A vapour grey, slow curling into blue, Token and pledge of well replenished board, When from the topmast tower of Abbotsford,.

Hammer and bell their airy voices mix, To speak and welcome the approach of six. Far leaps that echo bland o'er holt and hill- *

The Bard himself, 'mong central woods away, Pricks up at once his ears and Sybil Gray, And comes at such a canter from Kmside, That Laidlaw lifts his brow to see him ride, While all the tail canine partake the fury . . ." There is an expression which deserves to be signally commemo rated:— " Now'quaighs have circled round the foss or riaz, And tappit hens more sober mirth inspire."

The "kiss of fire" will be pronounced good by all who have ever received it. Would that the epistolary poet had given us some of the " bon mots sparkling mild" and " old yet aptest tales" that inspire a richer mirth than even kiss of fire or tappit hens ! This leads us to remark, that it is strange that doubt or mystery should have so long hung over the Waverley Romances, when nobody, that had ever the honour of sitting over the tappit hen—who was worthy of the honour—but must have risen from his chair with a conviction, strong as a revelation from above, that he had heard the "Great Unknown."

There are works of merit and names of note yet remaining to be noticed in the Anthologies of 1829 ; and when the expected Keep- sake is received, we shall have an opportunity of doing what justice we can to those we have not, as at this time, been able to commemorate.