its foundation in the natural circumstances of the case.-For they who love poetry, for the sake of an interesting story, for the sake of the morbid excitation, created by the exhibition of fierce thoughts of dark minds, and bad consciences in dire conflict with themselves-they who love poetry for the attraction of smooth numbers, meretricious graces, and incitements to hot passions, disguised in highly finished and delicately drawn portraits of luxurious beauty, will eagerly seize either the last new novel, or the last new poem-indifferently-save, that prose is passed over with more expedition-but poetry, being a harder material, bears a higher polish, and a finer point-and that the former, coming so much nearer the ordinary language of life, must be confined within the acknowledged limits; while the poet is a privileged person, and may come and go, where his less accomplished brother would be denied admittance, and may any time take a liberty, or lift a forbidden veil, provided he will do it with a grace, and touch off what he is admitted to behold, with a pencil dipped in the colours of a warm imagination.

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There are however many, we do not doubt, who love the soul-pleasing high-infused art," with a true and pure devotion, because there is a spirit in it, which animates, elevates, and enriches every object over which it is poured. Many who take up a poem with

a smooth and stedfast mind, Gentle thoughts, and calm desires,"

and behold with a sincere delight, the unlocking and the displaying of the charms of nature-many, to whom a deep view or far insight into the ideal world, which passes in vivid colours before the mind of a poet, is dearer, and confers more lasting gratification, than the brilliant pleasures of life-many, to whom a fine thought or beautiful image gives a sensible delight, though it occur in a production, which puts forth none of the factitious claims of poetry, and may perhaps be divested of the "manners and passions that constitute human interest." It is for such we write. Our Review is not one, which can derive assistance, of the most trivial kind, from any source, except the innate truth and beauty of literature. We can take up none of the questions, which divide the country "billowed high with human agitation;" we have no politics, and are the very antipodes of novelty. The subjects of our criticism are in their grave, alike deaf to the voice of praise or censure; and we are not ingenious enough, or it may be, too honest, to put our contemporaries to the rack on the monuments of the dead. We cannot supply the lounger with small talk at an easy rate, or cut out a royal road to literature, for those who would be wise, deep, and learned, at the expense of an hour's

study divided with a due attention to breakfast. They who read Reviews for a " précis" of the last new book, that they may appear to have read it, without having seen it, will skim over our "contents" with sovereign disdain.-We can tell them of none, save those whom they might have known long since, and whom they will get no credit for knowing now.

We have been insensibly led into these observations by a feeling, something like what is called, in philosophy, the "attraction of repulsion."-We had been copying the title of a book, which we knew to be the extreme opposite of that which is calculated to please a modern palate. Here is a book which none but they of simple unsophisticated taste may relish-they, whose plain appetites would lead them to drink of the rill, and feast upon rustic fare, may expect a considerable portion of pleasure from the pastorals of the gentle shepherd, William Browne. We We hope with" neat hand" to cull a few, not insipid herbs, for the lovers of nature; but away, ye profane! pampered and highfed, who dine with aldermen."

William Browne wrote his poems, when a very young man: filled with pleasing recollections of his native county of Devon, and, apparently, captivated with the poems of Spenser, which had just then appeared, and with the works of the "divine Astrophel," he deserted the law for "the muses." Young, and ignorant of life and manners, well skilled in classic lore, and ardently in love with nature, Spenser, and Sidney, we might easily have imagined the class of poetry, which he was likely to pursue. He took to writing pastorals, and has composed a series of poems, which, though abounding with pleasing passages, are devoid of all interest or passion, and frequently of all propriety of character or subject. He seems to have commenced writing, without any object and without any guide, except the assumed character of a shepherd, which he takes no other care to preserve, than by calling his pen a "pipe," and his readers "sheep." We have no subject, story, or plan, from one end to the other of the two long books, or ten songs, of the "Britannia's Pastorals," though there are frequent beginnings, and a constant introduction of characters, if they may be so called, who are expected, but in vain, to commence or carry into effect some projected design.-The persons too which are introduced, are the faintest and most indistinct visions of character that ever floated before the eye of a poetical dreamer; and the story, if story may be discovered, is as faint and indistinct as the characters themselves.-The whole poem, indeed, gives you the idea of a faded landscape in water colours, found on some damp neglected wainscot, where the original painting has melted away to indistinctness; and in which, the persons of the piece have lost all traits of individuality, and almost all appearance of life and action; and where every thing is tame and

dull, save here and there a bright green hillock, a flourishing tree, or perhaps in some corner a vivid glimpse of country which remains miraculously preserved in its pristine hues. Or perhaps we should convey a clearer idea of these singular volumes, if we were to compare them to the recollection of a dream-the scene of which has been laid in the country, and peopled with shepherds sitting on green banks," piping as if they would never grow old," and scornful shepherdesses crossing neatly-cropped meads, with stately step and disdainful air. Now, let this vision be dulled, as dreams usually are before the light of morning, and let it be mingled with the usual share of absurdities and improbabilities which are created and annihilated, one does not know how, in all dreams, and the reader will have a correct notion of the Britannia's Pastorals.-There are, however, bright and pleasant things even in dreams, which do not share the usual fate, of fading into frigid inanity on waking; and so it is also in the poems of William Browne. Though we have now a "seely shepherd, seelier than his sheep"-now an elegant young lady bemoaning herself, in the weeds of a shepherdess-now an allegorical and now an impossible person-now Limos, who is personified Hunger, running away with Marina, who is intended to be flesh and blood; and now Riot, who is an allegorical creation, changed by metanoia into Amyntas, a beautiful young man, for no earthly purpose-and a thousand other absurdities which have not even the merit of being laughable-yet there are many parts of true nature, and of a pleasing order of poetry.

It will not be expected, after what we have said, that we should attempt to give any account of the story or substructure of these pastorals.-The book is one which we can hardly expect any one else to read, though it does appear to have been a favorite with many individuals of taste, so that we think it a favorable subject for our method of exhaustion.. We shall therefore think ourselves at liberty to take up the book, and introduce the only really good passages, or at least those which are alone worth quoting, in the order that may best suit us. He opens the first song in this simple strain:

"I that whileare neere Tavie's stragling spring,

Unto my seely sheepe did use to sing,

And plaid to please myselfe, on rusticke reede,

Nor sought for baye, (the learned shepheard's meede,)

But as a swayne unkent fed on the plaines,

And made the Eccho umpire of my straines :

Am drawne by time, (altho' the weak'st of many)

To sing those layes as yet unsung of any.
What neede I tune the swaines of Thessaly?
Or, bootelesse, adde to them of Arcadie?

No: faire Arcadia cannot be compleater,

My prayse may lesson, but not make thee greater.
My Muse for lofty pitches shall not rome,

But homely pipen of her native home:

And to the swaynes, love rural minstralsie,

Thus, deare Britannia, will I sing of thee."

Marina, who is the first shepherdess introduced to us, is described in the following extract, which contains some animated lines, as about to drown herself through despair,

"Here is a mount, whose toppe seemes to despise

The farre inferiour vale that under lies:

Who, like a great man rais'd aloft by fate,
Measures his height by others' meane estate:
Neere to whose foote there glides a silver flood,
Falling from hence, I'll climbe unto my good:
And by it finish love and reason's strife,
And end my misery as well as life.

But as a coward's hartener in warre,

The stirring drumme keepes lesser noyse from farre,
So seeme the murmuring waves, tell in mine eare,

That guiltlesse bloud was never spilled there.
Then stay awhile; the beasts that haunt those springs,
Of whom I heare the fearefull bellowings,

May doe that deede, (as moved by my cry)
Whereby my soule, as spotlesse ivory,

May turne from whence it came, and, freed from hence,
Be unpolluted of that foule offence.

But why protract I time? Death is no stranger,
And generous spirits never feare for danger:
Death is a thing most naturall to us,

And feare doth onely make it odious.

As when to seeke her foode abroad doth rove

The Nuncius of peace, the seely dove,

Two sharp-set hawkes doe her on each side hem,
And she knowes not which way to flye from them:
Or like a shippe, that tossed to and fro

With winde and tyde, the winde doth sternely blow,
And drives her to the maine, the tyde comes sore
And hurles her backe againe towards the shore;
And since her balast and her sailes doe lacke,
One brings her out, the other beates her backe;
Till one of them encreasing more his shockes,
Hurles her to shore, and rends her on the rockes:
So stood she long, 'twixt love and reason tost."

The deity of a spring thus resents the insult of some substance being thrown into his stream.

"the God below,

Starting, to wonder whence that noyse should grow:
Whether some ruder clowne in spite did fling
A lambe, untimely falne, into his spring:
And if it were, he solemnely then swore

His spring should flow some other way: no more
Should it in wanton manner ere be seene
To writhe in knots, or give a gowne of greene
Unto their meadowes, nor be seene to play,
Nor drive the rushy-mils, that in his way
The shepheards made: but rather for their lot,
Send them red waters that their sheepe should rot,
And with such moorish springs embrace their field,
That it should nought but mosse and rushes yeeld.
Upon each hillocke, where the merry boy
Sits piping in the shades his notes of joy,
He'd shew his anger, by some floud at hand,
And turne the same into a running sand.
Upon the oake, the plumbe-tree and the holme,
The stock-dove and the blackbird should not come,
Whose muting on those trees does make to grow
Rots curing hyphear, and the misseltoe."

The God, finding that it is a beautiful female who has fallen into his domains, makes love to her in the following strain, which flows as smoothly as his spring.

"Would she be wonne with me to stay,

My waters should bring from the sea
The corrall red, as tribute due,
And roundest pearles of orient hue :
Or in the richer veines of ground
Should seeke for her the diamond.
And whereas now unto my spring
They nothing else but gravell bring,
They should within a myne of gold
In piercing manner long time hold,
And having it to dust well wrought,
By them it hither should be brought;
With which ile pave and over-spread
My bottome, where her foote shall tread.
The best of fishes in my flood
Shall give themselves to be her food.