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bin Log, and the player lady, Desdemona, in Love, Law, and Physic; for from that original it must have been drawn. But we cannot trifle on such a subject: the faults, even the follies of a Nelson, are subject for mournful pity, and deep reflection, rather than satiric levity. What shall we say to this senseless, this vulgar, this impudent account; not an individual mentioned, or alluded to in it, but is grossly libelled. First, a British officer, conducting a British ambassador with his wife, on an occasion of great public festivity, to visit his victorious and beloved commander, is represented as treating her rudely, and forgetting what was due to himself as a gentleman. Who the author's naval acquaintance may have been, we shall not presume to say; but he must have been, we think, singularly unfortunate, if he has drawn his specimen from his own experience. For our parts we have been more happy, and with some knowledge of the gallant leaders of our national force. We scarcely know the man among them, to whom such a picture would bear any resem. blance.

Next as to Lady Hamilton.-Never, we will venture to say, did malice so overshoot itself. In the beginning, it is said to be "a fine piece of acting;" in the middle, it becomes

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a rehear sal of theatrical airs," and has "the appearance of a tragic queen;" in the end, it is the downright vulgar horse play of the aforesaid Desdemona. And this then was the chef d'œuvre of dramatic exhibition, at a time when she desired to produce the most lasting and powerful impression on a simple, mauly mind, by a woman whom we all know, and who in a thousand places in this very book is admitted to have been finished in all the arts of deception, who could preserve grace in the extreme of pas sion, and nature in the most consummate affectation; in whom the voluptuary, the player, the painter, and the sculptor, delighted to study, whatever was most excellent of beauty, dignity, or harmony in expression, attitude, and manner..

But all this is nothing-for the officers of the navy, they can be injured by no such writer as our author; and for Lady Ha milton, it little matters now to that worthless woman herself, or to any one else, whether she was a skilful or clumsy work-woman in her trade; it is the tendency of this passage, as it affects Nelson, that provokes our indignation. The memory of a fallen hero is national property, among the most valuable that a nation can possess, we are rich in it; but let us shew that we deserve our wealth, by rightly valuing it. And how does this author shew his value for it? Simply by placing Lord Nelson in the most ridiculous situation, that inventive malice could suggest; by telling a story, which makes this great man (our pen almost refuses to write the words) a dupe to the most awkward artifice,

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and a liar in a plain matter of fact, in which he could not have mistaken.

The second of the two passages is of the same offensive kind, though from the nature of the subject matter, not so vulgar in execution. It relates to Lady Hamilton's alleged public services. It is well known, that Lord Nelson uniformly in his life time affirmed, and at the solemn moment immediately before the battle of Trafalgar, when his bodings were such, that every thing he said or wrote might well be construed into dying declarations, asserted these services to have been great. It is well known also, that he specified amongst them particularly, her exertions in procuring him permission to victual and water his fleet after the first and ineffectual search for the French Fleet under Admiral Brueys. Now we think it quite consistent with our respect for Nelson, to doubt whether his representation be wholly correct, because it implies no suspicion of his veracity to imagine that he might have been deceived as to the original ground of these services, and then from excessive partiality have unintentionally exaggerated their extent. And we are the more inclined to think this must have been the case; for it is the only supposition which would justify the total neglect exhibited on the part of our government towards the repeated claims of Lady Hamilton for remuneration, and the more painful denial of the last request of the dying Nelson,

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So far then in the main we agree with the author; but it is the singular unhappiness of his nature to select on all occasions the most offensive of all the grounds presented on which to build his opinion. His assertion is, that the Sicilian court was most eager to render the fleet all possible assistance, and that if that had not been the case, the zeal of the people was such, as to render all interference on the part of the government unnecessary, if favourable, and nugatory, if adverse to our wants. To these assertions is added an assumption, that if Nelson had been refused a supply, he would have taken it by force. What is the amount of this? Not that Lady Hamilton deceived Nelson; but that he uniformly in life, and solemnly in death, deceived England.

We have no time to extract and dissect the suicidal passage in which this charge is contained; in truth, we are heartily tired of wading in a book, where the only relief from disgust is con, tempt a cheerless and tiresome alternation. Of such a book, the less we extract, or analyse, the better; it is our plan to make our readers acquainted with the substance of all the productions which fall under our censure; but it would be a degrading, nơ less than an uninteresting task for us and for them, to trace the professed subject of the present volume under several aliases, through

through all the scenes of low and vicious life, detailed in these pages. The vicissitudes of that miserable class, from which she emanated, are but little varied; short periods of uneasy splendour and gaiety, horribly forced and unnatural, interrupted continually, or for ever succeeded by disease, and want, and misery, by daily violation of the almost inextinguishable remains of female delicacy, by constrained submission to brutal insult, by fictitious delight where indifference or disgust are really felt, by naked and houseless famine, and the deeply knowing sense, that there is no hope, that all is irretrievable; this is their complication, comprisal, collection, and sum of bitterness.

If Lady Hamilton escaped some part of the dismal catalogue of evils above enumerated; if, by unusual address, and eminent personal accomplishments, she attained a situation in life, which for her might well be called exalted; if, because our higher classes were found wanting in the stern, yet dignified discipline of former times; she was for a while victorious, and out-faced the good and tried severity of English society; if she was flattered, admired by many, and loved even to his own ruin, by one who had no equal in his day; yet let her not be held up as an instance of successful or unpunished vice; let it not be imagined, that she was free from all visitation. She suffered with the lowest before her exaltation: in the midst of it she encountered much anxiety, and many most bitter mortifications; after it closed, when the foolish and the wicked, who had basked in her sunshine, fled from her distress, and the good and the great, whom she had injured, duped, and misled, were no longer at hand to uphold her, she became indeed an object for the pity of the most inveterate malevolence. Desolate, bereft, and abandoned, harassed by creditors, stripped of comforts, that long use and declining age had converted into necessaries, for some time a prisoner in her own country, and then an exile from it—is it in short possible to imagine any lot more cheerless or gloomy, than the last years, the drooping sickness, and the death-bed of Lady Hamilton.

ART. VII. The Field of Waterloo: a Poem. By Walter Scott. 8vo. pp. 56. Constable, Edinburgh; Longman and Murray, London. 1815.

IT would be difficult to point out a nation in which Poetry and Patriotism have for so long a period been more cultivated, or less united, than in our own. Though plants of the same soil of

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liberty,

liberty, and flourishing each with unabated vigour, they refuse to twine around the same stock. The genius of our best poets, when passing events demand their strains, appears paralysed and unstrung, Were we to account for this phenomenon, we should refer it to that spirit of generous reserve, which forms so distinguishing a feature in our national character. To do great deeds is the privilege of a British Hero; to hear that they are done is the glory of the British nation. The more simple and unvarnished the tale of their achievements, the more perfect is the sense of triumph which it imparts. The feelings of the heart which rise out of present events are of a nature too vivid and penetrating to be embodied in words; and the greater the magnitude of the event, the less are the powers of language adequate to its expression. Upon a feeling so native and so true, all the meretricious ornaments of poetry are lost either in apathy or disgust. The simple names of Talavera, of Vittoria, of Waterloo, raise in the hearts of the British nation a spirit and a warmth, to which the Epinicia of Pindar or Milton would appear flat and insipid. The natural consequence of this sensation appears to be, a general distate of all panegyric upon actions so noble, and a determined neglect of every attempt to clothe them in appropriate song. The task therefore of celebrating these great events has generally fallen to men of inferior talents, or if one of a higher order shall step forward to celebrate the glories of his country, his efforts appear nerveless and constrained, from the anticipation probably of the cold reception which awaits his too patriotic

muse.

We cannot say that the Poem before us is an exception to these conclusions. But if W. Scott has, in the facetious language of the Newspapers, fallen in the field of Waterloo, it is to be ascribed not so much to the unsuccessful display of his usual powers, as to the insuperable difficulties of his subject. Whatever poetry shall attempt even to pourtray, much more to adorn the actions performed in that day of glory, will be rewarded with a chaplet, not of the bay of victory, but of that weed which rots itself on Lethe's wharf. Mr. Scott has visited the very field of slaughter; he has presented us with a graphic description of the country, and with a gazetted detail of the events of the day; but still his poetical fidelity stands him in no stead. The picture indeed is animated, and the language full of spirit; but we read it with the same sort of sensation which an officer, who had been present at the battle, would feel in seeing a panorama of the fight.

The allusion to the state of the fields at the time of the battle, and the expectation of harvest, is well described, especially in the latter and the more difficult part of the simile.

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"But other harvest here

Than that which peasant's scythe demands,
Was gather'd in by sterner hands,
With bayonet, blade, and spear.
No vulgar crop was theirs to reap,
No stinted harvest thin and cheap!
Heroes before each fatal sweep
Fell thick as ripen'd grain;
And ere the darkening of the day,
Piled high as autumn shocks, there lay
The ghastly harvest of the fray,

The corpses of the slain."

P. 14.

The hovering of death over the fatal plain is finely conceived, although we do not quite admire his summons to the bloody banquet: as his guests were not to devour but to be devoured.

"Death hover'd o'er the maddening rout,

And, in the thrilling battle-shout,
Sent for the bloody banquet out

A summons of his own.

Through rolling smoke the Demon's eye
Could well each destined guest espy,
Well could his ear in ecstacy
Distinguish every tone

That fill'd the chorus of the fray

From cannon-roar and trumpet-bray,

From charging squadrons' wild hurra,

From the wild clang that mark'd their way,—

Down to the dying groan,

And the last sob of life's decay

When breath was all but flown."

P. 17.

The address to Buonaparte is rather too long, and in parts devoid of spirit. The poet, however, has drawn an admirable simile from his Scotch mountains, which is applied with peculiar happiness to his subject.

"Or is thy soul like mountain-tide,

That, swell'd by winter storm and shower,
Rolls down in turbulence of power

A torrent fierce and wide;

'Reft of these aids, a rill obscure,
Shrinking unnoticed, mean, and poor,
Whose channel shows display'd

The wrecks of its impetuous course,
But not one symptom of the force

By which these wrecks were made!” P. 28.

The idea, that upon this single contest the name, the empire,

perhaps,

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