A SECOND GLEANING FROM THE ANTHOLOGIES OF 1829.

We resume our review of the Anthologies of 1829, which our limits obliged us to break off before we had duly admired some of the choicest flowers of the collection. The Keepsake, whatever be its value in other respects, has not made the addition we expected to the poetry of the season : its table of contents exhibits names of old renown, but there is little in the contents themselves which a-ill contribute to that renown. Some fugitive epigrams of COLERIDGE, which have lost their merit by being put in print ; some fragments of SHELLEY, interesting merely because they are his • some verses of SOUTHEY, addressed to Lucy, which have escaped from her mo- ther's album, where they were a treasure justly prized ; a trifle of Mooaa's, that; strange to say, is a trifle also in value ; a sonnet or two of WORDSWORTH, scarcely to be numbered among his ear- lier ones ; together with some interior verses inscribed with inferior names, constitute—exceptz's areipiendis—the poetical portion of the Keepsake. We proceed to note the exceptions.

THE TRIAD BY WORDSWORTFL The Grasmere poet's muse has in this poem renewed her youth, and winged a flight which might have been a marvel, were it not known how rich a source of poetic inspiration is parental affection, the principle to which internal evidence leads us to ascribe this effusion. Time has presented the author of the Lyrical Ballads with subjects worthier of his muse than the Alice Fells whom it was once his pleasure to sing ; and thus done more to shake his faith in the poetical legitimacy of duffle cloaks, &c., than the ridicule which the Edinburgh Re- viewers played off against his creed. At any rate, here is a poem as free from Lakishness as JEFFREY'S self could desire ; and as full of various beauty as the three Graces, or goddesses rather, whom it paints. To which of the Three the " favoured youth" gives, or means to give the apple, it is not given unto us to divine ; but if Venus be his choice, it is doubtless in the hands of the " tru- ant in waste woods, the blithe Euphrosyne," who has inspired the poet, till his verse trips as lightly as she whom it celebrates :— "If, from what her hand would do,

Or tongue utter, there ensue Aught untoward or unfit, Transient mischief, vague mischance, Shunned by guarded elegance, Hers is not a cheek shame-stricken,

Dut her blushe are jey4haesi7.t. And the fault (if fault it be) Only ministers to quicken Laughter-loving gaiety, And kindly sportive wit."

The imperial beauty of the Queen of Heaven is descried from afar by the gleaming fairness of the serene brow- . see it there,

Brightening the umbrage of her hair : So gleams the crescent moon, that loves To be descried through shady groves.

What would'st thou more? In sunny glade, Or under leaves of thickest shade, ' Was such a stillness e'er diffused Since earth grew calm while angels mused ? Softly she treads"—

" Ambrosimque comic divinuip vertice odorem spirant"—would have continued the Mantuan poet, who in a sunnier climate and at a greener ag,e had not the inspiration of the hoary bard on the shores of a cold northern lake. For what is the shedding of di- vine odours from ambrosial locks, to the image of the earth calmed into stillness under the influence of angelic musings ?—The Mi- nerva of the Triad can be no other than the " domestic Queen of the unambitious hearth,

"Whose skill can speed the day with lively cares, And banish melancholy By all that mind invents or hand prepares."

The poem is a fine specimen of poetical portrait-painting. From the amiable moods and graceful minds so exquisitely delineated, one infers personal beauty and gracefulness, just as to the original of a lovely portrait one is apt to ascribe corresponding loveliness of heart and mind. A sense of supreme beauty is conveyed, though without any definite shape. The Triad should have been illustrated • with an engraving of the "Three Sisters," of merit equal to that of the poem; and the vision would have been complete, without and within.

COLERIDGE'S GARDEN OF BOCACCIO. This poem may be pro- nounced to be what, with some exaggeration, the poet has pro- nounced the painting of STEPHANOFF—" an Idyll with Bocaccio's spirit warm." It is a dream or reverie of one who not untruly conceives himself possessed with "old Bocaccio's soul." The green arches, clear fountain, with shadows of the crossing deer, delicious sward, palladian palace, bridge's airy span, fountains, where love lies listening to their falls, and gardens,—

" Where many a gorgeous Hower is duly fed With its own rill, on its own spangled bed, And wreaths the marble urn, or leans its head, A mimic mourner,"—

are all seen as magically in the poet's verse, as the over-arching branches of the elm in the crystal pool below.

"0 all-enjoying and all-blending sage,

Long be it mine to con thy mazy page, Where, half concealed, the eye of fancy views Fawns, nymphs, and winged saints, all gracious to thy muse ! Still in thy garden let me watch their pranks, And see in Dian's vest, between the ranks Of the trim vines, some maid that half believes The vestal fires, of which her lover grieves,

117th that sly satyr peeping through the leaves."

The Laudes lialice, albeit they flow in measured mood, have not the stately versification of VIRGIL and ADDISON ; but they are

more discriminative and exquisite.

The poetical treasury of the Keepsake, with the exception of the admirable version of the" King and the Minstrel of Ely," from the Norman-French, by Mr. LOCKHART, is already exhausted. We return to the Anniversary; which, preserving least the cha- racter of a Souvenir, is by far the richest collection of poetry to

which the year has given birth.

WILSON. This name is the link that connects the poets of this day with the two commemorated above ; who though, as has been seen, they yet touch the lyre with a hand that vindicates their supremacy, belong properly to an age which is passed. The author of the "Isle of Palms" is consecrated in memory with the great writers who flourished earlier in the century, and the author of " Edderline's Dream" is one of the chief—in sonic judgments the very chief—of those who flourish now. In the latter of these two poems we may remark the absence of the peculiarities which distinguished the first, and which, though greatly modified, were striking enough to declare in what school the poet had been bred. In " Edderline's Dream," though we are not prepared to set it above our old favou4te, the reader will observe none of the bright inexplicabilities and unintelligible conceptions that shed a brilliancy without form over the " Isle of Palms." On the contrary, though we are occasionally at a loss to feel the associations by which they are connected, the images of " Edderline's Dream" are distinct copies of existing realities and of feelings well understood.

This silent, and it may be unintended abjuration, on the part of the poets once called of the Lake, of all the characteristics of their earlier poetry, we are disposed to ascribe to the mighty influence of BYRON; a poet whose imagination teemed like their own with images of nature, and whose feeling of it was as lively and discri- minating as theirs, but who seldom or never strained after subtleties which he could not make intelligible, or spoke of feelings which the reader's heart could not re-echo. The imagination of WILSON is richer even than BYRON'S in natural imagery, and he paints the aspect of the visible world with more exquisite delicacy ; but his pictures are beautiful pieces of still life—there is an absence of vital. warmth and human feeling—we admire, but it is as we admire the pendent icicle or filagree of frost. The chords of the reader's breast are not kept in perpetual Nibration, nor is the soul incessantly shook as by him, who not only gives us to see file beauty of nature, but to participate with him in the feelings it inspires. Fault or merit, BYRON'S own soul was ever the soul of his verse ; and when through the !medium of the latter we look out on the river, or the lake, or the distant Alpine summit dyed into rose hues by the sinking sun, it is in sympathetic com- munion with the 'poet's own great spirit. In WILSON'S poetry, fair scenes expand and sweet sounds are heard, but we have not the same intercommimion with him who describes what he has seen and heard. This constant deep self-infusion may have given to BYRON'S poetry the character of sameness, but it has also com- municated to it a power over the reader such as none other ever possessed. No poet, to use his own iier4-,retic phrase, ever wreaked his feelings so on his verse, or ever mixed himself up with it so ab- solutely. We hardly want a biographer for 13yRom, unless it be to learn his domestic peculiarities, and his minor faults or virtues. He himself has written himself down for what he was :— " Ine vela fidis arcana sodalibus ohm

Credebat libris ; neque si male cesserat, usquatn Decurrens alio, neque Si bene : quo fit, ut °mins Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita poetic."

But to return to the subject ;—we might define " Edderline's Dream," as far, at least, as the poem is yet developed, a sue cession of images strung on a very slender thread, and having sometimes no other excuse than their beauty for their appearance there. The following examples will illustrate the rapidity with which the loveliest forms of nature crowd on the poet's mind, when the string of associations is ever so gently stirred. In a lonesome room of a lone rock-built castle, a lady is described in midnight sleep. The death-like solitude suggests the image of some old tomb, which, built far within a forest glen, and overarched by black pine trees,— " Flings back its arched gateway tall,

At times to some great funeral."

Its silence again is as profound as that of a central cell, in the bosom of a mountain, the haunt of fairy people, cold and sunless.

The repose of the lady is illustrated by the most exquisite images of stillness which nature supplies :—

" — a clear and silvery well

By moon-light glimmering in its cell; A river that doth gently sing Around the cygnet's folded wing: A billow on the summer deep,

That flows yet scarcely seems to flow."— But "a change comes o'er the spirit of her dream," and, agitated by fearful visions, the lady is flung wildly over her bed, suggesting the idea of a corse that, to all eyes unknown, lies wrecked and stranded, "mid joyful cries Of birds that pierce the sunny skies, With seaward dash, or in calm bands Parading o'er the silvery sands, Or 'mid the lovely flush of shells, Pausing to burnish crest or wing."—

The gentle maid, whom that lady loves, tries to wake her from this horrid sleep ; but awhile in vain :-

" For in her soul a thousand sighs

Are madly struggling to get free ; But that soul is like a frozen sea That silent lies in ice and snow, Though the deep teutffs boom below."

The lady wakes, and her stirring brings to mind

"the wondrous flower That blossoms at the midnight hour And only then ;"—

whilst, under the influence of returning remembrances all bright and fair, her spirits revive and her colour returns,

"Even as a gloomy mountain lake From its dark sleep at once cloth break, And while afar the mists are driven In new-born beauty laughs to heaven !"

She kneels in prayer, thanking God it was but a dream, and ploring him to temper

. . . . . . " sun and air

To him, my home-bound mariner,"

and her face shines through her tears, —" As a cloud, that long bath lain Black amid the sullen skies,

Suddenly dissolves in rain, And stricken by the sunlight, shines."

We have cited these examples, not because they are the most beast tiful, but as being the fittest. to illustrate the overflowing stock of the author's natural lore. The fairest creature poet ever drew walks out into a morning, crowded with every image, and ringing with every sound that glads the eye and ear of the early riser never was such a living picture drawn ! (See Anniversary, pages 40, 41.) The morning's "dewy hush divine," gives to the spirits of the lady all their wonted elasticity- " She sends the blessing of her smiles

O'er dancing waves and steadfast isles; And, creature though she be of earth, Heaven feels the beauty of her mirth.

How seraph-like the silent greeting, Streaming from her dark-blue eyes, At their earliest matin meeting, Upwards to the dark-blue skies 3"

To give the force of contrast to pictures of equal beauty but op- posite effect, we subjoin a passage, wherein the same face is seen in sleep by the fitful light of a midnight lamp-

" Now just expiring, faint and dim !

Like to a spirit loth to die,

Contendina.e' with its destiny. All dark ! A momentary veil is o'er the sleeper ! now a pale Uncertain beauty glimmers faint, And now the calm face of the saint 'With every feature reappears Celestial in unconscious tears ! Another gleam ! how sweet the while,

Those pictured faces on the wall Through the midnight silence smile! Shades of fair ones, in the aisle Vaulted the castle cliffs below, To not king mouldered, one and all, Ages long ago."

The following extract we are induced to subjoin, as being a singular echo, both in point of rhythm and ideas, of the poet whose minstrel harp has hung too long unstrung and silent ; —will it never wake again ? The lady, with a quaking prayer, and looking like the sea-mew floating over a waterfall, descends upon the blackness and horror of a glen, in whose savage depths broods a seer-hermit,

"Shuddering close beside his feet To see the frequent winding-sheet- Spite of the water's din to hear Steps trampling grave-wards with a bier— Or like a sweep of wintry weather Wailing at midnight o'er the heather Cloud-coronachs that wildly rise When far away a chieftain dies."—

For what purpose the lady descended, we trust the poet will tell ; and if eleven more cantos succeed like the first, we pray that we may live to read the twelfth.

J. G. LOCKHART. Time will quickly find out the mortal parts of this collection ;—the least vital will fade with the year, and of the rest, much that pleases this generation will not reach the next. A small portion is imbued with the quitthtpars Veneris—the quint- essence of beauty—that will preserve them for aye. To this im- mortal part—though not of native produce, but made native by the translator's genius—belongs the " Farewell to the Year," from the Spanish of Luis BAYLON; a poem which we have found so attractive, that ALLAN CUNNINGHAM'S splendid volume opens as naturally at it as a young lady's prayer-book at the page of matrimony. There is in it the Horatian charm of mirth enhanced whilst it is qualified by reflection on the brevity of life,—of the bowl wreathed with cypress, and of crowns of roses interwoven with night-shade. But the Christian poets—Spaniard or Scot— one or both—have breathed other feelings in the composition, of which the sleek son of Epicurus, pinguis et nitidus, was unsus- ceptible. The precept is not a vulgar instigation to enjoyment- sapias, vine liques—make haste and live, for life is short and death spares no man—the philosphy and the religion of HORACE. There is a glimpse of the long heareafter, the thought of which, whilst it casts a shade on our mirthful hours, is not without its consolation :— " Nay, droop not : being is not breath ;

'Tis fate that friends must part, But God will bless in life, in death, The noble soul, the gentle heart.

And solemn but not sad this cup should flow Though nearer lies the land to which v:e go."

Blended with this devotional feeling, is a vein of kindliness, which is equally wanting in the poet, whose maxim was to bowl through life, teres algae rotundas ; and who to all its changes and chances presented a well-oiled breast impervious alike to the gentle shower and rattling hail.

—" We may miss the merriest face Among us, 'gainst another year, Whoe'er survive, be kind as we have been, And think of friends that sleep beneath the green."

Finally, the very soul of BYRON speaks in one of the stanzas, wherein is a slight passing expression of grief that moves one per- haps more than the more prolonged laments in which that poet poured himself forth. Forbearance in the indulgence of grief is mightily moving, where the grief has been powerfully indicated :— the strong tide checked in its career proves the strength of the mind that controls it ; and we are apter to sympathize with the sorrow that would hide itself, than with that which is wracked on our sympathy.

"Alas, as round this board I look, I think on more than I behold For glossy curls in gladness shook

That night, that now are damp and cold..-

For us no more those lovely eyes shall shine, Peace to her slumbers ! drown your tears in wine."

To Mr. LOCKHART we owe also the version from the Norman French of "the King and the Minstrel of Ely," already alluded to. The licensed jester's bald wit aml evasive replies to plain questions are admirably well rendered :—

" So help me Jesu! (quoth the King)

I'll ask thee yet one other thing. Minstrel, wilt sell thy nag to me ?"—

" More gladly faith than give it thee r- " Is he a young one ?—" Well I wean

His chin hath yet no razor seen."—

" is't a good eater ?"—" That I'll swear : This gelding in a single day

Will eat more trusses, grass or hay, Than you 'tween January and May."- " Is he a creature of good speed ?"— " A pretty question's here, indeed ! Howe'er I spur, howe'er I thump, The head keeps still before the rump"— " Knave (quoth the king) I value not Thy ribald turns and quirks a jot." " l'd rather that thou didst by half, For 'tis coy trade to raise a laugh."

In truth we apprehended a conclusion to the merry min- strel's evasions, that would have left anything but the laugh on his side ; something like that wherewith old Dalzel interrupts Cuddie's doublings in the Privy Council. "Speak out, you scoundrel, or I'll dash your teeth out with my dudgeon haft !—do you think we can stand here all day to be turning and dodging with you, like greyhounds after a hare ?" We have not space to do justice to some other pieces of great merit we had intended to notice ; but a time may come hereafter. Our readers may think we have dwelt too long on works which, collectively, are so ephemeral ; but they comprehend pieces that will long survive the collections in which they first appeared ; and, better or worse, the poetry of these volumes:is the poetry of Bri- tain at this day. And after all, it may not be amiss to abstract the mind occasionally from the more vulgar realities of life, and to turn a rill of Parnassus even through the middle of Cheapside.

ALMANACKS.—The remarkable success last year of the British Almanack, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, has this year produced, on the part of the Stationers' Company, the birth of the English Almanach, and the death of Poor Robin. The new Almanack of the Com- pany is a capital imitation of the Society's—finely printed, accurate in sub- stance and (compared with the former ratio of execution and price) singu- larly cheap. Out of these very qualities, it is true, this question might be raised--were the Company's former profits exorbitant; or is the new work published without profit, or at a loss, in a spirit of sheer emulation ? How- ever this may be settled, the public reap the benefit of the competition ; and, in supporting both according to their deserts, have only to bear in mind to which of the rivals they owe the existence of competition and improvement. The British Almanach, that led the way in the race, is itself considerably enlarged and greatly improved this year; and, with the advantages which it derives from the care and patronage of the Society for the Diffusion of Know- ledge, there is no fear that it will ever be distanced. We intended to say more on this subject than we can make room for at present : some useful information regarding these and other Ahnaoacks, may be found in the number of the London Magazine just published.