contain a dozen passages with which human nature can sympathise, which have any relation whatsoever to mundane affairs, or which even by allegorical construction, can be said to point a moral which is applicable to man. Our argument is, what is such poetry fit for? If it cannot please, or improve us, what on earth can it do? It becomes a nuisance to society, and should be disowned as such. If then Mr. Bailey is desirous of holding a place among the poets of his country, let him commence by committing "The Mystic," to the flames, aud then set about correcting his faults energetically, just in the same manner, as one would endeavour to overcome a bad habit: by so doing he has a fair chance of obtaining a respectable position; if he do not achieve something considerable in the way of reformation, he himself may outlive his poetry.

"Men and Women," by Robert Browning, a work in two volumes, containing fifty poems, is now lying before us, and constitutes a subject for more melancholy reflections than does that of any other of the three, we have chosen for notice on this occasion. Longfellow in Hiawatha has evidenced a departure from the dignified and philosophical character of his former poems, but his late production is not the unmistakeable manifestation, of obstinate adhesion to false principles of taste and structure; Bailey's Mystic, is a still more ludicrous exaggeration than Festus, but we never had such an opinion of the creative power of the Author, as to entertain the hope that his genius would endow our literature, with material gifts from its salutary idiosyncrasies; Browning, however, whom we still look upon as a poet of much originality, power and reflection, whom we regard as the possessor of attributes enabling him to confer considerable benefits on his countrymen, in the improvement of their intellects, and their hearts, has given, in his late volumes, to our very great regret, but too great a profusion of instances to demonstrate the dogged pertinacity with which he clings to vices, which would swamp in their fatal vortex the giant mind of Shakspere himself. Obscurity is the evil genius that is working the ruin of this poet: Browning is, pre-eminently, the King of Darkness; like Charles Lambe, whose passion for "Roast Pig," was of that violent kind, that he confessed himself ready to give up anything to his friends, save and except that beloved dish, so Browning, (but with much less reason), appears equally as resolute in maintaining possession

of his darling hobby, which is never permitted to be absent even from the most trifling conceptions of his brain. The poet's imagination is of that lofty order which stamps the impress of high intellectuality on all his thoughts, and his power of language can invest those thoughts with the most brilliant dress; but he is defeated in all his undertakings by this foul demon which ever marches by his side, and snatches the wreath descending on his brow. Mistaking the allegorical meaning of the Owl of Minerva, he would seem to have supposed that a somnolent and gloomy visage, and a love of darkness, were the striking traits which recommended that bird to the Goddess of Wisdom; never jogging his memory to call back the fact, that it was the power of "seeing in darkness," to which the "Bird of Night" is indebted for his appearance on her shield. But Browning has other faults, all more or less disfiguring, and constantly exhibiting themselves. In the two volumes now before us, there are sufficient crudities, contortions, and dissections of the language, to ruin the reputation of fifty poets: in almost every one of the poems they contain, concatenated verse, transposed sentences, direct inversion of grammatical rules, substitution of one part of speech for another, and obsolete or self-coined words are constantly visible. Besides these sad facts, the subjects of the poems themselvs are the most tasteless, and the most unmeaning it is possible to conceive: the Author would appear to have sedulously searched the most dusty shelves of the most antiquated book cases; to have taken therefrom the most musty tomes, and like a veritable bookworm of the Dominie Sampson school, to have selected the most trifling quips and quiddities of the schoolmen for public parade, and as fit stalking horses, for his ponderous and drowsy amplification.

The first impression a perusal of these poems necessarily makes, is, how an Author who can create such beauties, can perpetrate such literary atrocities. It is a problem impossible of solution, unless we suppose that Mr. Browning has arrived at the conclusion, that to be ridiculous is to be great; or that the only way to make his books sell, is to distinguish them by some peculiarities, which at the cost of everything rational and consistent, will establish his name as a caterer for the morbid curiosity of the public. If indeed we reflect upon the great pervading taste which exists for anything that

smacks of notoriety, we may be inclined to consider this latter motive a more sagacious one: in the same way as we give credit to Madame Tussaud, for the ingenuity with which her "Chamber of Horrors," with its interesting inmates, was devised, or as we applaud the inventive capacity of the manager who drew crowded houses to witness the performance of a lap-dog, when the glorious Siddons played to empty benches, and the genius of Kemble could not even fill the pit. But will the poet who respects his own intellect, who is conscious of the duty he owes his kind, who knows the more solemn debt he owes his God, for the gifts which he has conferred upon him, willingly barter the splendid promises of noble and enduring fame, which belong to him who can. stamp the impress of wisdom, and beauty, on the workings of his mind, for such ephemeral admiration, as the buffoon, the conjuror, or the mountebank can command? We would prefer to think that the errors of Browning arose from any cause but this: for abstracting altogether the pecuniary character of the proceeding, he who panders to a vitiated public taste, is not alone quite unworthy to wear the poet's bays, but must inevitably bring upon himself the most thorough contempt of every honest mind. Now to substantiate our charges: the following extract is taken from an early part of an epistle containing the strange medical experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician," and beyond all doubt, the doctor's experience was "passing strange."

And share with thee whatever Jewry yields.
A viscid choler is observable

In tertians, I was nearly bold to say,
And falling-sickness hath a happier cure
Than our school wots of: there's a spider
here

Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of
tombs,

Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back;
Take five and drop them but who knows
his mind,

The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to?
His service payeth me a sublimate
Blown up his nose to help the ailing-eye.
Best wait; I reach Jerusalem at morn,
There set in order my experiences,
Gather what most deserves and give thee

This shews us that Jericho after all is not the place to send a bore to: what think you, reader, of the next extract, representing a phase in the character of an Epileptic patient?

Instans Tyrannus, is too perfect a piece of preposterous nonsense, if we may use such an expression, to authorize us in merely giving a portion of it for those uninitiated in the mystic rites, of which Mr. Browning is the "Fons et Principium :" it will be a task, we fancy, something like the cleansing of the Augean stable, to comprehend it.

Browning sometimes takes off the buskin of Melpomene, and puts on the motley of Thalia: however, he does not always succeed in unlocking "the gates of joy," as the following will evidence; it places us in that curious situation (so beautifully expressed in Mrs. Sigourney's Death of an Infant,) in which we know not "whether to laugh or weep, to laugh at the unequalled absurdity of the passage, or to weep at such a ruthless disregard of all the promptings of reason, and all the whisperings of taste.

There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining

Under those spider-webs lying!

So your fugue broadens and thickens,
Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
Till one exclaims-" But where's music
the dickens?

Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web
strengthens,

Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"

Bishop Blougram's Apology, is as odd a discussion on Philosophy as ever was heard, and the author does well to inform us that it was an after dinner argument: we defy any one to say that having read it, he has gleaned anything tangible, or that he considers it possible to deduce any definite conclusion therefrom. Another melancholy instance of perverted talent, is presented to us in a Poem called, Old Pictures in Florence, where indeed we discern the " Membra," but unfortunately the "disjecta membra Poetae." Being Christmas times, it brings vividly before our minds the gyrations, somersets, "extraordinary leaps," and other excellencies of the Clown in the Pantomime, and never was there an instance of physical pliability of limb, in the person of any respectable Acrobat, since the days of the renowned Grimaldi, which could stand comparison, in its own way, with the intellectual kalysthenics this poem displays: take this example—

Not that I expect the great Bigordi

Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bel-
licose;

Nor wronged Lippino-and not a word I
Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's.
But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,

To grant me a taste of your intonacoSome Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?

No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

Could not the ghost with the close red cap,
My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman,
Save me a sample, give me the hap

Of a muscular Christ that shows the
draughtsman ?

No virgin by him, the somewhat petty,

Of finical touch and tempera crumblyCould not Alesso Baldovinetti

Contribute so much, I ask him humbly?