shallow pate, soon completely unsettled the too lively imagination of the other: and thus I escaped the endless insipidity which awaited me, in my intended journey to Stockholm, and to Copenhagen. I ransomed myself, by entertaining one of these kings; and being entertained by the other. "My son Charles married a pretty little Polish lady. Her family gave us paper, instead of cash. They were claims on the court of Russia. Passing through Poland, I made myself, or I was made, a Polander. A mad bishop (hanged since) uncle to my daughter-in-law, conceited that I was on terms of intimacy with the empress, because he had learnt that she had received me most favourably; and he imagined that I should be king of Poland, were I but naturalized. What a change,' said he, 'in the face of European politicks! What happiness for the Lignes, and for the Masalskys.' I laughed at him. But I felt a fancy to please the nation then assembled in diet, and by the nation I was applauded. I spoke Latin; I kissed, and I caressed mustachios; I intrigued for the king of Poland; who is himself an intriguer; like all kings who are suf. fered on the throne, only on condition of acting according to the will of their subjects, or that of their neighbours. He is goodnatured, amiable, insinuating; I gave him advice, and we became quite inti mate. "I arrived in Russia; and the first thing I did was to forget the object of my journey; because it appeared to me rather indelicate to take advantage of the favourable reception I experienced every day, to solicit favours. I was captivated by the unreserved and alluring simplicity of Catharine the Great *; and by her genius I have been led to this enchanted abode. ... This is the famous Cape Parthenion, distinguished by many events. On this spot mythology exalted the imagination. All the talents in the retinue of the heathen deities had here established their empire. "If, for an instant, I leave fable for history, I discover Eupatori, founded by Mithridates; I gather near this spot, in that old Cherson, fragments of alabaster columns; I find the remnants of aquaducts, and of walls, which present a circumference more extensive than that of London and Paris together. Those two cities shall disappear as this has done. This By a refinement of flattery the article the is in the masculine gender in the French original. was the scene of similar intrigues, botk in love and in politicks; every one here thought he was making a conspicuous figure in the world; but, even the name of these countries, disfigured under the appellations of Tartary, and the Crimea, is now completely forgotten! What a reflection for moralizing men! Why, then, I look around, and approve the laziness of my good Mussulmen, who sit with arms folded, and legs crossed, squat and motionless on their flat roofs. I found among them an Albanese, who knew a little of Italian. I desired him to ask them, whether they were happy? if I could do any thing for them? and if they knew that they had been given to me by the em. press? They answered, that they knew generally, that they had been allotted; which they did not well understand; that they had been happy till now; that if their fate should change, they would embark on board two vessels they themselves had constructed, and seek a refuge among the Turks in Romania. I bid the interpreter tell them that I loved lazy people; but that I desired to know their means of living. They pointed at some sheep ly. ing on the grass, like myself. Oh, how happy I accounted the lazy! They showed me their fruit trees; and desired the interpreter to tell me, that when the gathering season arrives, the Kaimakan comes from Baschisaria to take the half of the produce. Each family sells fruit yearly, to the value of two hundred livres [81. 88.] and there are forty-six families in Parthenizza and Nitika, another small estate belonging to me; the Grecian name of which signifies victory. Again I felicitated the lazy! I promised to prevent their being oppressed. They brought me butter, cheese and milk; not mares's milk, as among the Tartars. Once more I accounted the lazy happy! and I sunk again into my meditations. I estimate the world; I consider it as a kind of magick lantern, till the moment, when I myself shall disappear under the scythe of time. I then recollect, as a dream, nine or ten campaigns I have made:* a dozen of battles or engagements, at which I have been present. I muse on the emptiness of glory; which, unnoticed, is forgotten; which envious people attack, or dispute. And, notwithstanding all that, I say to myself, a part of my life has been spent in risking *This was previous to the Turkish war, which broke out soon after; and in which the prince highly distinguished himself. Ah! whither then with thee to fly, pared materials for caricaturing Gertrude of Wyoming, in which the irresistible Spanish pantaloons of her lover were not forgotten, Albert was regularly distinguished as old Jonathan, the provincial troops were called Yankie-doodles, and the sombre Would sound like voices from the dead! character of the Oneida chief was XXXVIII. "Or shall we cross yon mountains blue, And stones themselves to ruin grown, XXXIX. "But hark, the trump-to morrow thou pp. 71-73. With these stanzas the curtain is dropped over the dead and the mourn ers, and the poem is concluded. Before we proceed to any general examination of Gertrude of Wyoming, we think it necessary to inti mate to our readers, that it is by no means owing to deficiency of wit, on our own part, that we have conducted them in sober sadness from the beginning to the end of Mr. Campbell's affecting tale. We are perfectly aware that, according to the modern canons of criticism, the reviewer is expected to show his immense superiority to the author reviewed, and at the same time to relieve the tediousness of narration by turning the epic, dramatick, moral story before him into quaint and lively burlesque. We had, accordingly, pre hardly worth noticing in criticizing ori. ginal poetry. VOL. IL G g relieved by various sly allusions to "blankets, strouds, stinkŭbus, and wampum." And having thus clearly demonstrated to Mr. Campbell and to the reader that the whole effect of his poem was as completely at our mercy as the house which a child has painfully built with a pack of cards, we proposed to pat him on the head with a few slight compliments on the ingenuity of his puny architecture, and dismiss him with a sugarplum as a very promising child indeed. But, however prepared we came to quizz what is no otherwise ridiculous than because serious and pathetick, our hearts recoiled from the disingenuousness of the task. We shall ever be found ready to apply the lash of ridicule to conceit, presumption, or dullness; but no temptation to display our own wit, or to conciliate popularity, shall prompt us to expose genius to the malignant grin of envious folly, or by low and vulgar parody to derogate from a work which we might strive in vain to emulate. We return from this digressive apology to the merits and defects of Gertrude of Wyoming, which have this marked singularity, that the latter intrude upon us at the very first reading; whereas, after repeated perusals, we perceive beauties which had previously escaped our notice. We have, indeed, rather paradoxically, been induced to ascribe the most obvious faults to the same cause which has undoubtedly produced many of the excellences of the poem,-to the anxious and assiduous attention which the author has evidently be stowed upon it before publication. It might be expected that the publick would regard with indulgence those imperfections which arise from the poet's diffidence of his own splendid powers, and too great deference to the voice of criticism. In some respects, however, publick taste, like a fine lady, "stoops to the forward and the bold ;" and the modest and anxious adventurer is defrauded of the palm, merely that his judges may enjoy the childish superiority of condemning an overlaboured attempt to give them pleasure. Let no reader suppose that we recommend to imitation the indiscreet, and undaunted precipitation with which another popular poet is said to throw his effusions before the publick with the indifference of an ostrich as to their success or failure. To sober criticism the fault of him who will not do his best is greater than the excess of over caution, as the sin of presumption is greater than that of spiritual despondency. Carelessness is also a crime of deeper die when considered with reference to its effects upon publick taste; for the habit of writing loosely is particularly captivating to the fry of young scribblers, and we are in danger of being deluged with rhapsodical romances by poets who would shrink from the attempt of imitating the condensed, polished, and laboured stanzas of Gertrude of Wyoming. But considered with reference not to the ultimate reputation, but to the immediate popularity of the author, it is dangerous to allow the publick to suppose that they have before them the work upon which, after the most solicitous and anxious exertion, he is willing to stake his poetical character. A spirit of contradiction, which animates the mass of mankind, impels them to depreciate that which is presented as the chef d'œuvre of the artist; and the question is no longer whether the work be excellent, but whether it has attained that summit of excellence on which no poet ever was or ever will be placed by his contemporaries. We have hitherto only considered the labour bestowed upon Gertrude of Wyoming as an impediment to the flow of popularity which has in the present day attended poems of a ruder structure. But the publick taste, although guided in some degree by caprice, is also to a certain extent correctly grounded upon critical doctrine; and the truth is, that an author cannot work upon a beautiful poem beyond a certain point, without doing it real and irreparable injury in more respects than one. It is in the first place impossible to make numerous and minute alterations, to alter the position of stanzas, to countermarch and invert the component parts of sentences, without leaving marks of their original array. The epitaph of the Italian valetudinary will apply as well in poetry as in regimen; and it may be said of many a laboured effort of genius: "Stava bene, ma per star meglio, sto qui." There are in Gertrude passages of a construction so studiously involved, that nothing but the deepest consideration could have enabled the author to knit the Gordian knot by which his meaning is fettered, and which unfortunately requires similar exertion of intellect ere it can be disentangled. An ordinary reader is sometimes unable and always unwil ling to make such an effort, and hence the volume is resigned and condemned in a moment of splenetick impatience. Some of the introductory stanzas have their beauties thus obscured, and afford rather a conjectural than a certain meaning. We allude to the second in particu lar. Similar indistinctness occurs in the construction of the following sen tence: "But high in amphitheatre above His arms the everlasting aloe threw: Breathed but an air of heaven, and all the grove Insinct as if with living spirit grew." The idea here is beautiful, but it is only on reflection that we discover that the words in italicks mean not that the aloe breathed an air of heaven, but that the grove grew instinct with living spirit so soon as the slightest Shouldst thou the spirit of thy mother greet, O say to morrow that the white man's hand Hath plucked the thorns of sorrow from thy feet." Lastly, and above all, in the irksome task of repeated revision and reconsideration, the poet loses, if we may use the phrase, the impulse of inspiration; his fancy, at first so ardent, becomes palled and flattened, and no longer excites a correspondent glow of expression. In this state of mind he may correct faults, but he will never add beauties; and so much do we prefer the stamp of originality enthusiastick feeling, experiences that The dear illusion will not last, The era of enchantment's past. "Though my perishing ranks should be Like beaten shore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe! And, leaving in battle no blot on his name, Look proudly to heaven from the deathbed of fame." to tame correctness, that were there not a medium which ought to be aimed at, we would rather take the prima cura with all its errours, and with all its beauties, than the overamended edition in which both are obliterated. Let any one read the most sublime passage in Shakspeare, a hundred times over, without intermission; it will at length convey to the tired ear, neither pathos nor sublimity, hardly even an intelligible idea. Something analagous to this occurs to every poet in the melancholy task of correction. The Scythians, who debated their national affairs first in the revel of a festival, and afterwards during a day of fasting, could hardly experience a greater sinking of spirit in their second consultation, than the bard who, in revising the offspring of moments of Or look to yon heaven from the death-bed The whole of this individual, vi-. gorous, and marked picture of the Highland chieftain lying breathless amid his broken and slaughtered clan-a picture so strong, that we even mark the very posture and features of the hero-is humbled and tamed, abridged and corrected, into the following vague and inexpressive couplet : "Lochiel Shall victor exult in the battle's acclaim, of fame." If the pruning knife has been applied with similar severity to the beauties of Gertrude of Wyoming, the hatchet of the Mohawk Brandt himself was not more fatally relentless and indiscriminate in its operations. The book contains, besides Gertrude of Wyoming, several of Mr. Campbell's smaller pieces. Lochiel in particular and Hohenlinden are introduced, although they made part of the author's last quarto volume. We cannot be offended at meeting our favourites any where; yet when we connect the circumstance last mentioned, with the reflection that Lochiel has been unnecessarily al tered and abridged, we are not tho. roughly satisfied with their insertion in the present volume. Two beautiful war odes, entitled the Mariners of England, and the Battle of the Baltick, afford pleasing, instances of that short and impetuous lyrick sally in which Mr. Campbell excels all his contemporaries. Two ballads, Glenara, and Lord Ullin's daughter, the former approaching the rude yet forcible simplicity of the, ancient minstrels, the latter upon a more refined plan, conclude the volume. They were new to us, and are mo dels in their several styles of compo sition. [The following article, and an able review of the French Code of Conscription inserted in the first volume of the Select Reviews, page 369, are attributed to the pen of a young gentleman of Baltimore, who has lately returned from Europe, where he has been spending several years. Both articles appeared originally in the Edinburgh Review.] Biographie Moderne, ou Dictionnaire Biographique de tous les Hommes morts ou vivans, qui ont marqué à la fin du 18 Siecle ou au Commencement de celui-ci, par leur Rang, leurs Emplois, leurs Talens, leurs Malheurs, leurs Vertus, leurs Crimes, et où tous les faits qui les concernent sont rapportés de la Maniere la plus impartiale et la plus authentique. A Leipzig. 1807. "TO endeavour," says Machiavel, in his Discourses, " to make a people free who are servile in their nature, is as hopeless, as to attempt to reduce to slavery a nation imbued with the spirit of freedom." This remark, which was dictated by a review of history in the days of Machiavel, is eminently confirmed, we think, by the events of our own times. There are nations who cannot be permanently enslaved and others cannot be long maintained in the erect posture of freedom. It is often no less foolish than it is criminal, in an ambitious sovereign to bear down the unarmed laws of a free people; and sometimes unwise and unjustifiable in an honest patriot to subvert all at once a corrupt or arbitrary govern ment. These reflections were suggested by the perusal of a curious and interesting work on the French revolu tion, which has accidentally fallen into our hands. Under the title of Modern Biography, it purports to be a history of all those who, by their rank, their talents, their virtues, and their crimes, have contributed to il lustrate, or to disgrace, the end of the last and the commencement of the present century. Before we offer an opinion concerning the execution of so comprehensive a plan, we shall state the circumstances, which, as we are informed, attended the publica tion of the work in Paris. In the year 1800, a Dictionary, similar in form to the present, but characteri zed by far greater asperity and boldness, was published in the French ca pital, and immediately suppressed by the police. The authors seem to have had it in view, to expose the inconsistency of those who had enlisted themselves in the service of the consular government, after signalizing |