Oh! how he pants to face the fresh-wing'd breeze,
And list the voices of the summer trees:

To breathe, and live, and move, and be as free

As Nature is, and man was made to be!
And when at night, upon his flinty bed,
Silent and sad, he lays his grief-worn head,
There as the dungeon bell, with dismal sound,
Tolls midnight through the sleeping air around,
Remembrance wafts him to congenial climes,
And frames a fairy world of happier times—
The woodland haunts around his native scene,
The village dance upon the festive green,
His sloping garden where he lov'd to ply,
And smiled as peeping flower-buds hail'd his eye,
His beauteous partner, and her blue-eyed boy,
Who prattled, play'd, and fed his soul with joy.

A favourite specimen of sublimity in Darwin, beginning' Immortal Love, who ere the morn of time,' and embodying an idea of Creation, derived from a fable of Aristophanes, strikes me as polished almost into tameness. Not so its antithesis in Campbell-a Hindoo fable of the Day of Judgment—The Tenth Avatar-derived probably from or modified by the anaglyphics or picture-writing of the Apocalypse.

Nine times have Brama's wheels of lightning hurl'd
His awful presence o'er the alarmed world;
Nine times hath guilt, through all his giant frame,
Convulsive trembled, as the Mighty came;
Nine times hath suffering mercy spared in vain,-
But heaven shall burst her starry gates again!
He comes! dread Brama shakes the sunless sky
With murmuring wrath, and thunders from on high.

F

Heaven's fiery horse, beneath his warrior form,
Paws the light clouds and gallops on the storm!
Wide waves his flickering sword; his bright arms glow
Like summer suns, and light the world below!
Earth, and her trembling isles in Ocean's bed,
Are shook; and Nature rocks beneath his tread!

This is, indeed, a noble passage; but in the ten diluted lines which follow (To pour redress, &c.) and which close the book, the excited attention is defrauded of the justly-expected climax; with the inane imagery of Seriswattee lifting her hallowed wand,' and the feeble transposition of

6

Camdeo bright and Ganesa sublime:

In short, the entire frame of this well-conceived poem is evirated by a fastidious timidity in overpolishing.

But the preceding sublime passage may be fairly matched by the Thunder-Storm of R. Montgomery. The subjoined verses will bear a rigorous test of comparison.

Ye giant winds! that from your gloomy sleep
Rise in your wrath, and revel on the deep;
Lightnings! that are the mystic gleams of God,
That glanced when on the sacred mount he trod;
And ye, ye thunders! that begird His form,
Pealing your loud hosannahs o'er the storm!
Around me rally in your mingled might,
And strike my being with a dread delight;
Sublimely musing, let me pause and see,

And pour my awe-struck soul, O God! to Thee.

A thunder-storm-the eloquence of heaven,
When every cloud is from its slumber riven,
Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan,
And felt Omnipotence around him thrown?
With what a gloom the ush'ring scene appears!
The leaves all flutt'ring with instinctive fears,
The waters curling with a fellow dread,

A breezeless fervour round creation spread,
And, last, the heavy rain's reluctant shower,
With big drops patt'ring on the tree and bower,
While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform,-
All mark the coming of the thunder-storm!

Oh! now to be alone, on some still height,
Where heaven's black curtains shadow all the sight,
And watch the swollen clouds their bosoms clash,
While fleet and far the living lightnings flash,-

To mark the caverns of the sky disclose

The furnace-flames that in their wombs repose,
And see the fiery arrows fall and rise,

In dizzy chase along the rattling skies.

The next picture is in a different style, and exquisitely tender.

A DAUGHTER SITTING BY HER FATHER'S

DEATH-BED.

There, as the melancholy midnight bell

Tolls o'er the sleeping world the day's farewel!,
Frequent she glances at his wrinkled brow,
And those dear eyes, so dim and deathful now,
Till all his love and all his care returns,
And memory through her brain and bosom burns.
That drooping hand, so delicately weak,
How often had it smooth'd her infant cheek;
Or danc'd her, lightly tripping by his side,
And prattling sweetly with delighted pride;

Or pluck'd the painted flower that charm'd her age,
Or gently oped instruction's pictur'd page,

Or pointed to the trepid beauty-star
That twinkled in the vesper sky afar.

In this comparison I have arrayed the minor poem of one poet against the principal poems of the two others. This is hardly fair; for I have not brought Montgomery's principal poem, Satan, to bear upon the question. Nor have I yet said any thing of his Satires. In Satan, even more than in the Omnipresence, the peculiar forte of Robert Montgomery is brought into the lists—namely, vivid susceptibility to nature's beauties, and graphic power in delineating them. From some of the passages in which this wizard potency is displayed, the bards of Hope and Memory, with all their mail of proof' and godlike array-with all their admitted greatness in other qualities, must retire. Even Byron, had he lived, unrivalled as he was in one particular by any ancient or modern bard-the fierce and searching energy with which he dissected the mind and heart of man-might have owned, in this quality, a brother near his throne.'

In confining myself to the comparison of Robert Montgomery with Rogers and Campbell, I have been induced partly by the kindred style and subjects of their poems. If I have not compared him with other modern poets, of great and deserved repute, it is because their peculiar class of poetry cannot be brought to the same test. Scott's fame rests, and will rest,

not on his poetry, picturesque as it is, and studded with antiquarian 'gems of price,' but on his inimitable and immortal prose. In one respect, there is an analogy between the leading distinction of his prose and that of Robert Montgomery's verse-that which constitutes the mystic charm of his novels-his GRAPHIC POWER-the vigour with which he paints a scene in all the vivid reality of hue and outline on the startled retina of the imagination. Moore is as a lyrist unmatched-a glittering star, apart,' moving to heavenly music-the combined Anacreon and Catullus of Britain. Robert Montgomery is a poet of the old and sterling English school: he is original, but he is no mannerist-he does not try poetical experiments on style. His poetry is regular-hence he cannot be brought into possible comparison with the school tauntingly termed the Lake,'-Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, mighty names, whom, though I differ with them as to the poetical theory which they have endeavoured to set up, I mention with the homage due to great talents. Their imagination seems too visionary for the guidance or apprehension of common judgment, too diseasedly nauseated with common but life-bearing food, and too misdirected by an overweening and morbid craving for unlicensed novelty. Moreover, their chief distinction is, that they reject the rigid orthodox canons by which I have guided my argument through the whole of this inquiry, and act up to their doctrine of dissent by dissenting practice. Condemned