27 DECEMBER 1828, Page 10

LITERARY SPECTATOR.

A POEM called Christmas, by one EDWARD MoxoN', has at least the merit of being seasonable. The last EdinburghReview, in enumerating the poets of the age, amongst whom it reckons foremost Mr. ATHERSTONE, the poet of Herculaneum and Nineveh, does not record the name of MoxoN in the list of fame: we think, however, it might be added at the tail of a muster-roll of which Mr. ATHERSTONE was the Coryphmus. It is true that Christ- mas contains few ideas which can be said to be younger in age than the year of our Lord ; still the topics are appropriate, and, lovers of Christmas as we have been, and venerators of its ancient festivities in our Saxon island, we cannot run over these verses, destitute of poetry as they chiefly are, without feeling a strollg home pleasure. Mr. MoxoN and his theme recall incessantly scenes of domestic pleasure long gone and never to return ; and here is all his power, and the charm is not in him but in his eader. We love to hear of family reunions, when feuds die away and old sympathies revive ; we love to hear them celebrated, and would pardon a worse carol than this by iliwga,t, as he ought to write his name. Perhaps it may only be our partiality for the subject, but it seems to us that we even detect considerable merit in a passage or two such as the following:—

"Beneath the humblest roof we may Each laughter-loving group survey : Their little parlour deck'd with green, May to advantage rare be seen; The whiten'd hearth, the chimney row, With polish'd iron grate below. A Robin near, too, often heard; And there a portrait, George the Third,' And here a print, 'tis Hogarth's Harlot,'

Close by the late good Princess Charlotte !

A sampler framed, with Rules of Health, And Franklin's standard Way to Wealth.

There too, in one thick towering column, Is ranged each well• read dog-eared volume. The Holy Bible first is seen, Which long a register has been. That holds within its sacred page The records of a moulder'd age, The name of many a sire and son, The day each first his life begun, And when their little race was run.

A History, England's Rights and Charters, With Fox's Book of blessed Martyrs.

Here Bunyan, with the Psalter, lying,

And Taylor's Rules for Holy Dying—

A few odd volumes, Murders, Treasons, With Baxter's Rest, and Thomson's Seasons."

This passage only required in the author a somewhat greater power of versification to be worthy of CRABBE himself ; had it been in prose, it would have seemed an emanation from the happy fancy of the gentleman to whom the poem is dedicated.

* London, 1828. Hurst, Chance, and Co.