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torious priest, John Ball, was married, and must inform the author, that fellowships and livings are not convertible terms. If there be any other mistakes, they have escaped our notice.

75. Specimens of British Poetesses; selected and Chronologically Arranged by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, B.A. Oxon.

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HOWEVER high and lofty a claim, may be exultingly advanced for our fair band of lyrists of the present day, and however their fugitive scatterings may be lauded by the periodical press, we of a graver age cannot erase from memory things that were.' We still feel a veneration for the Muse when her handmaids enrobed her with the stiff and rich brocade, and doubt whether the gympe and cumbrous finery she then wore has not yet more of the imagery and lasting attributes of poetry, than the tinsel and fringe so lavishly manufactured to adorn her now. With these impressions we felt a manifold obligation to the industry of the Editor of this volume in again calling to memory the casual and unlaboured productions of the early British Poetesses,' too long neglected and dispersed, fugitives that needed some friendly hand to gather them into the garner. The task is now fitly and judiciously performed. To each article is affixed a brief and useful notice, but of ninety specimens, commencing with Dame Juliana Berners, and ending with Lætitia Eliza Landon, sixty the flickering of fancy may term 'old-fashioned.' This objection, if it is one, the Editor has attempted to obviate by devoting a moiety of the volume to Mary Robinson, and her contemporaries and successors, the ardent founders of (borrowing a hackneyed phrase) the new schools. Jane Barker and some lesser lights of the seventeenth century are omitted, probably to form a corps of reserve for another edition. Favouritism also appears in rejecting among the moderns, for we can hardly believe the Editor unacquainted with the productions of Lady Manners, Maria Riddell, Anne Bannezman, &c. certainly with of omniparity some that swell his list of poetesses. Admitting specimens of living writers, however the female mind is making a rapid advance,' had better have been avoided. We are costive enough to believe the Indifference'

names

of single piece Greville' will beam a star of fame when time has diminished the galaxy of modern brilliance into a thousandth ray. In other respects the Editor's volume, 'one of the first that has been entirely consecrated to women,' is excellent, forming a valuable Appendix to the Specimens of Ellis, Southey, and Campbell, and must be considered, like those, a standard work.

76.

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The Tor Hill. By the Author of "Brambletye House," &c. In three vols. 8vo. Colburn.

THE author of this work stands much in the same relation to his great Exemplar," as the ordinary novel writers of the day stand towards him-there is a great gulph between each, through which it seems impossible for either to pass. There is a steady and pleasing course, very far above mediocrity, very much below the standard of excellence, in which he moves; and laying aside all invidious comparisons, to which we have been formerly forced by the injudicious praise of interested parties, we are most willing to award him the merit that belongs to a lively and ingenious writer. Such are our honest impressions. We hail him therefore as a powerful auxiliary in the ranks of imaginative writers, with strength and resources sufficient to interest and amuse during the absence of "The Master," and with an ease and a grace that belong only to genius and a cultivated taste.

The subject of the present story belongs to the times of the Eighth Henry, a period the most pregnant with moral consequences to us and to our posterity of any that history embraces. For, as Mr. Smith has well and beautifully observed in allusion to the vices and depravities of this Monarch and his Court: "from these poisonous elements did Heaven, by a beautiful moral alchemy that merits our admiration not less than our gratitude, extract that inestimable elixir of Reformed Christianity, which effected more in a few years towards ennobling and advancing the humau race than all that had been accomplished since the birth of Christ."

The references to this important event are therefore among the most interesting occurrences of the volume, and they are treated by our author in

a manner most creditable to his talents, and most honourable to the estimate he has formed of the value of this great blessing. A benefit which subserves in his hand to exalt a feeble intellect to the heroic daring of a Christian martyr, and to subdue a fiery and impatient spirit to the meekness and angelic temperament of the Gospel of Peace. We will endeavour to give a broad outline of the story itself.

The work opens at Calais, and gives a portrait of Sir Giles Hungerford, who, impatient of his appointment as Governor of the Lantern Gate, is anxious to exhibit his prowess in some more active service, and from his fiery temperament is willing to engage in any warfare rather than wear out his spirit in rest and inaction. The opportunity is soon afforded him. A party of adventurers from Calais having been surprised, had surrendered to the French troops, and were murdered by the peasantry in cold blood. Sir Giles proceeds at the head of a small body of regulars, but followed by a band of adventurers (a description of persons little better than robbers) to take signal vengeance on the murderers. He effects his purpose, but is afterwards himself surprised by a larger force, and after a desperate battle, is mortally wounded. He is conveyed into the French camp, where he dies, after having given his nephew Dudley the necessary directions respecting his only child, Cecil Hungerford, then under the care of Sir Lionel Fitzmaurice in England, providing, that if his son should die without issue, his estates should devolve upon Sir Lionel.

The Duke of Vendome having learnt the death of his prisoner, directed that the body should be escorted to the frontiers of the English pale with military honours; and a truce having subsequently been concluded, Dudley proceeds to England to fulfil his uncle's injunctions, and to decide upon a measure in which he is more nearly concerned, having been affianced (as was the practice of the age) when a child, to the eldest daughter of Sir Eustace Poyns. He is attended on his journey by an Anglo-Gaulish servant named Pierre, who is destined to whistle and sing through all the adventures of his master after the most approved fashion in such cases made and provided. Dudley arrives in Eng

land in the immediate vicinity of Wells in Somersetshire, and in the neighbourhood of Sir Lionel Fitzmaurice.

We must pass over a capital description of the Hostelry of "The Tables," the Landlady "Sib Fawcett," and the adventures of Dudley and his map: in the cavern of "Vokey hole," as contributing little to the progress of the story. But we will bring the travellers at once into the presence of the hero of the piece, Sir Lionel himself, merely premising that during a thunder storm, which interrupted their journey to the Tor House, the travellers had seen their host in the habiliments of a necromancer stalking on the ramparts of his castle, the presiding genius of the storm, and directing the wrath of the angry elements. Dudley is here invited to take up his abode, and is introduced to the wife and daughter of Sir Lionel, the former a strange compound of the domestic economist and heroic devotee, now prating in the antiquated jargon of an ancient housewife, and not unfrequently displaying an energy of character worthy of the best ages of romance.

The daughter Beatrice is a stately high-souled beauty, with all her father's haughtiness, but without any of his dissimulation. This character has been beautifully and elaborately wrought, and she will doubtless prove a general favourite.

In this mansion is imprisoned the unfortunate Cecil Hungerford, the heir of the possessions surrounding the Tor House, and in whose, fate a melancholy interest is excited. The intention of Sir Lionel has been long manifest. In his communications with Sir Giles Hungerford on the subject of this unhappy youth, he had represented him as of feeble frame and of weaker intellect, utterly unfit for knightly enterprize, craven, and effeminate. His real character is, however, very different, and is ably drawn. Upon this sensitive being the most devilish arts and diabolical contrivances had been practised. Optical illusions were superadded to personal chastisements, until he was goaded into such aberrations as would almost justify a charge of temporary lunacy. It is under these influences that Dudley has an accidental sight of the son of his own relative Sir Giles, and his first impression is that of com

passion for his fatuity, until a further acquaintance during his stolen interviews exhibits the practices of Sir Lionel and his infernal agents in their true light. He obtains an interview, and taxes him with his crimes towards his ward, a fierce rencontre ensues, Dudley's sword is wrested from his grasp by some unexplained contrivance, and he owes his life to the interposition of Beatrice. This is one of the most animated scenes in the story, and is as fine as it is highly wrought.

Dudley escapes to the Abbey of Glastonbury, with whose venerable abbot Sir Lionel has had a long and rancorous feud, and by the advice of this able counsellor he proceeds to London to solicit the aid of Wolsey, then in power. "Yes, my son," says the abbot," even though he be leagued with the spirits of darkness, they shall fall prostrate before the spirit of light and of the law, even as the magicians of Pharaoh sank down before the superior power of Moses."

Dudley digresses on the road to pay a visit to the father of his betrothed, and to take a view of his intended, now no longer interesting, since his acquaintance with Beatrice had ripened into a mutual attachment. The whole family of Sir Eustace Poyns in their stately formality are but the bores of the novel, and as they assist nothing in the developement, we may dismiss them all, with the exception of the intended wife of Dudley, with whom in the sequel we are again concerned. Dudley reaches London, but his enemy has been at work before his arrival. By the assistance of a relative (Sir John Dudley) he gains an interview with the Lord Cardinal. Some charges are brought forward by the Cardinal which are vehemently denied by Dudley, being, as the reader will suspect, the malicious reports of Sir Lionel. In addition to this, his enemy had denounced him as treasonable and disaffected, and the emissaries of the Star Chamber were in pursuit of him. By the advice of his attorney, he "takes sanctuary" in Westminster, a place privileged from arrest, and consequently abused to the vilest purposes. Here resorted untried malefactors, runaway spendthrifts, the dregs of the city, and all whom vice or misfortune had compelled to banishment from society were here congregated.

In the mean time the threat of the Cardinal was not inoperative. A commission was appointed to examine into the state of the supposed lunatic Cecil, and the diabolical machinery of Sir Lionel was again employed to unhinge the mind and bewilder the intellect of his unhappy charge, The detail of these practices is painfully distressing, and we should have imagined them sufficient, on a spirit so finely touched and a frame so delicately organised, to have effected their intended purpose. Of the scene that follows, we cannot speak in terms of approbation, highly wrought as it is, "Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus

Incederit."

It was a most hazardous attempt, and we think cannot be approved by a sound taste. Under the influence of feelings more than usually excited by the increased horrors that had been practised in the night, he hurries into the fields, and after a melancholy apostrophe to his desolate condition, he addresses a prayer to the deity, typified by the sun. Concluding "Thou wilt not refuse to see me when I kneel before thee; thou wilt not draw down those eye-lids in anger when I humbly"- "He broke off with an abrupt horror, for a gust of wind suddenly springing up, dispersed the mist, and discovered to him the object which he had just addressed as the central eye of God with its lid drawn down. So at least it appeared to his disturbed and terrified perception." It was the great solar eclipse. Of course his insanity is confirmed, and Sir Lionel obtains a momentary triumph.

We have brought our readers thus far into the plot, and we feel that it would tend to weaken the interest they would feel in the perusal of the story, were we to pursue it to its disentanglement. Here, therefore, we shall leave them; after hinting that we have not even adverted to a very important Royal Personage, who is made to act a very characteristic part.

There are many pages in these volumes in which the general reader will feel no sympathy. We mean that accumulation of antiquarian lore under which the author has buried heroes and heroines, to the sad interruption of the interest we feel in their fate. His lectures on gastronomy would have been amusing elsewhere. We have no ap

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petite to discuss the dainties at the Swan, scarcely to feel any pleasure in the banquet of the Cardinal. Our thoughts are in the Tor House, in the prison-room of the unhappy Cecil, or awaiting the result of that complicated machinery by which Sir Lionel, the necromancer-the alchymist the demon-works his impious purposes. Not but that the researches of the author into the customs of the age of which he wrote, are highly creditable to his industry, and his correct synchronical skill; but there is, if we may say so, a too affected display of the treasures he has gleaned, and too strong a savour of recent acquisition-he has read that he may write, a very natural process doubtless, but it seems too apparent.

Upon the whole, then, we assert Mr. Smith has written a clever and entertaining romance, hurried perhaps too abruptly and unnaturally to a close, yet exciting throughout a deep interest, and maintaining a steady course through many high and perilous flights. There is much skill in the individual portraits introduced, nor is any offence given to historical accuracy.

The references to that great Work to which we have before alluded, are in a strain of grateful piety, and redeem some of the earlier blemishes. We allude to the profane rhapsodies of Friar Francis, whether delivered in monkish Latin, or in the very words of our ritual. Mr. Smith has commenced a successful career; and though we dare not say,

"Cheer'd by his promise we the less deplore

The fatal time when Scott shall be no more;" he has our best wishes, that health and leisure be given to him to enjoy his merited honours, and to enlarge his interesting contributions to the joint stock of harmless pleasure and

innocent amusement.

76. The History of the Reformation of the Church of England. By Henry Soames, M.A. Rector of Shelley in Essex. Vol. III. (Reign of King Edw. VI) 8vo. pp. 768. TO a despotic Prince, Popery is a most useful State machine, because its doctrines tend to slavery of mind and person, and, like the Inquisition in Spain, the plea of irreligion may be made to cover the imprisonm and

murder of those whom the Sovereign wishes to destroy. But in England it must, except in a very few instances, have been a very serious incumbrance. For there the King had only to conciliate the Parliament, and, except in the case of a quarrel between them, the intrusion of the Papal usurpation must have been under the best eircumstances a great inconvenience; and if a quarrel did ensue, then the King or the Barons respectively tried to win the Pope over to their party, and the unnatural contest was only protracted. The wars of York and Lancaster had sickened the people of civil war; and Henry, who, with regard to the country at large, was averse to inciting rebellion, managed his Parliament with ease. Indeed England could get nothing by the Pope. It could acquire no accession of liberty, law, or wealth. For every want of this kind, the people resorted to their Parliaments. To these, not to the Pope, they looked for controul of the King; and long before the Reformation they felt only the wretched consequences resulting from an excess of devotees, that is, an excess of petty, annoying, domestic tyrants; for in private life, devotees always act the part of persecutors, spies, pedagogues, and informers. They will be masters over every body. Whatever were the motives of Henry, and they were several, his tyrannical disposition was a providential good; for a man who had so much of the Devil in him as not to give way to God, would not be likely to succumb to the Pope; and when Cranmer suggested that the papal authority was itself amenable to that of Scripture, Henry seized the powerful weapon with avidity, and slashed away as he liked. It was evident that the

Pope could have no chance of resist

ance, unless he could excite a rebel

lion. This he could not do, and was

therefore obliged to submit to exile. During his secession, i. e. till the reign of Mary, Cranmer was fortunately the ruling ecclesiastical authority; and the work before us, the progress of the Reformation in the reign of Edward VI. shows that the architect of it was that admirable (we could almost in our enthusiasm say) inspired Reformer; for of him it might be said as of David, "He overcame the hon and the bear (Gardiner and Bonner), and made the uncircumcised Philis

tine (the papal Goliath) as one of them."

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To show in what manner he effected this wonderful victory, is the striking feature of the work before us. enters into the most luminous details of the circumstances, and exhibits by\ the clearest logic the wisdom and policy of the measures adopted. Sophistry indeed advanced to the combat, but it was shot dead in the very instant that it came within the line of fire. The doctrinal troops of the Pope proved like his military ones, mere men of straw, when they had to combat with Scripture, the doctrines and practices of the primitive church, common sense, and fair dealing. In truth our author very justly says,

"It is often a matter of astonishment with Protestants, that any serious men of sound sense and good information can continue in the profession of Popery, but when it is known that such pains have been taken to prevent even learned Romanists from finding in libraries complete information upon their own religion, this circumstance may be accounted for easily enough." p. 160.

The temper of Cranmer, which was exceedingly amiable, was exactly of the kind fitted to conciliate an imperious King and haughty nobles. To the former he had proved a most useful counsellor and auxiliary; and as the History of the Reformation, though excellently told by Mr. Soames, is a topic far too copious for our limits,

and as we have no idea that we can

give the portrait of a man by exhibit ing only his nose, we shall make our extract from a passage containing a conversation of Henry concerning Cranmer. It will show, inter alia, how closely Elizabeth copied the style and manner of her father.

"An attack was made upon Cranmer's reputation during King Henry's reign. Sir Thomas Seymour, then one of the gentlemen of the privy chamber, stood foremost in the work of mischief. His first measure was to circulate a whisper about the court that the Archbishop of Canterbury, although selling woods and taking fines to an unusual extent, had greatly departed from the hospitality of his predecessors, being intent only upon realizing a fortune for his family. These reports were so notoriously false, that some members of the Royal household quarrelled with Seymour for spreading them abroad. The knight, however, persisted in his tales, and one day he contrived to make the King GENT. MAG. May, 1827.

acquainted with them. Henry observed, 'I do marvel that it is said my Lord of Canterbury doth keep no good hospitality; for I have heard the contrary.' Then, uttering some high commendations of the Archbishop, he abruptly broke off the discourse. Within a month afterwards, as the King was dressing for dinner, he said to Sir Thomas, then attending with the ewer; Go ye straightways unto Lambeth, and bid my Lord of Canterbury come and speak to me

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at two o'clock in the afternoon.' The messenger immediately crossed the water, and enquiring for the Archbishop, was led by the porter towards the hall. No sooner had he reached the screen, than, stricken by the manifest falsehood of the tales to which he had lent himself, he started back. Within the spacious room were ranged three principal tables handsomely provided, besides inferior ones, liberally supplied. 'Cannot I go to my Lord's apartment through the chapel?' asked the Knight. That way, Sir,' said Mr. Neville, the Archbishop's steward, who now came forward, is not open at dinner time, the door being locked. You must therefore let me lead you into his Grace's presence through the hall.' On hearing this, Seymour followed his conductor, and soon found himself in an apartment where the Archbishop was dining in a manner suited to his station. The King's message being delivered, Cranmer insisted that his visitor should share his repast. Sir Thomas remained but a short time at table; being anxious, as he said, to return and wait upon his Majesty. reached the Royal presence before dinner was removed, and Henry said immediately, The reply was, He will wait upon your Will my Lord of Canterbury come to us?' Majesty at two o'clock.' The King asked again, Had my Lord dined before you came?' No, forsooth, I found him at dinner.' Well,' rejoined the King, 'what cheer made he you? Sir Thomas then fell upon his knees, and said, 'I hope that your Majesty will pardon me.' Why, what is the matter? asked Henry. I do remember,' replied the supplicant, having told your Highness, that my Lord of Canterbury kept no hospitality correspondent unto his dignity. I now perceive that I did abuse your Highness with an untruth. For besides your Grace's house, I think he be not in the realme of none estate or degree, that hath such a hall furnished, or that fareth more honourably at his own table.' The King then said, Ah! have you spied your own fault now? I knew your purpose well enough; you have had among you the commodities of the abbeys which you have consumed; some with superfluous apparel, some at dice and cards, and other ungracious rule. And now you would have the Bishop's lands and revenues to abuse like

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