judicial astrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came obsequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his severest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers, to evoke the queen of the fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent lustre. The Shakspere of a more instructed and polished age would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the caldron of incantation.

Undoubtedly most of these notions were credited and entertained in a much higher degree in the preceding periods. But the arts of composition had not then made a sufficient progress, nor would the poets of those periods have managed them with so much address and judgment. We were now arrived at that point when the national credulity, chastened by reason, had produced a sort of civilised superstition, and left a set of traditions, fanciful enough for poetic decoration, and yet not too violent and chimerical for common sense. Hobbes, although no friend to this doctrine, observes happily, "In a good poem both judgment and fancy are required; but the fancy must be more eminent, because they please for the extravagancy, but ought not to displease by indiscretion."

In the meantime the Gothic romance, although somewhat shook by the classical fictions, and by the tales of Boccace and Bandello, still maintained its ground; and the daring machineries of giants, dragons, and enchanted castles, borrowed from the magic storehouse of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, began to be employed by the epic muse. The Gothic and pagan fictions were now frequently blended and incorporated. The Lady of the Lake floated in the suite of Neptune before Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, and assumes the semblance of a sea-nymph; and Hecate, by an easy association, conducts the rites of the weird sisters in Macbeth.

Allegory had been derived from the religious dramas into our

civil spectacles. The masques and pageantries of the age of Elizabeth were not only furnished by the heathen divinities, but often by the virtues and vices impersonated, significantly decorated, accurately distinguished by their proper types, and represented by living actors. The ancient symbolical shows of this sort began now to lose their old barbarism and a mixture of religion, and to assume a degree of poetical elegance and precision. Nor was it only in the confirmation of particular figures that much fancy was shown, but in the contexture of some of the fables or devices presented by groups of ideal personages. These exhibitions quickened creative invention, and reflected back on poetry what poetry had given. From their familiarity and public nature they formed a national taste for allegory; and the allegorical poets were now writing to the people. Even romance was turned into this channel. In the "Faery Queen" allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthur's Round Table are moralised. The virtues of magnificence and chastity are here personified; but they are imaged with the forms, and under the agency, of romantic knights and damsels. What was an after-thought in Tasso, appears to have been Spenser's premeditated and primary design. In the meantime we must not confound these moral combatants of the "Faery Queen" with some of its other embodied abstractions, which are purely and professedly allegorical.

It may here be added, that only a few critical treatises, and but one Art of Poetry, were now written. Sentiment and images were not absolutely determined by the canons of composition, nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties is now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capriciousness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of conception; and this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction.

No satires, properly so called, were written till towards the latter

end of the queen's reign, and then but a few. Pictures drawn at large of the vices of the times did not suit readers who loved to wander in the regions of artificial manners. The muse, like the people, was too solemn and reserved, too ceremonious and pedantic, to stoop to common life. Satire is the poetry of a nation highly polished.

The importance of the female character was not yet acknowledged, nor were women admitted into the general commerce of society. The effect of that intercourse had not imparted a comic air to poetry, nor softened the severer tone of our versification with the levities of gallantry and the familiarities of compliment, sometimes, perhaps, operating on serious subjects, and imperceptibly spreading themselves in the general habits of style and thought. I do not mean to insinuate that our poetry has suffered from the great change of manners which this assumption of the gentler sex, or rather the improved state of female education, has produced, by giving elegance and variety to life, by enlarging the sphere of conversation, and by multiplying the topics and enriching the stores of wit and humour; but I am marking the pecu. liarities of composition, and my meaning was to suggest that the absence of so important a circumstance from the modes and constitution of ancient life must have influenced the contemporary poetry.

All or most of these circumstances contributed to give a descriptive, a picturesque, and a figurative cast to the poetical language. This effect appears even in the prose compositions of the reign of Elizabeth. In the subsequent age prose became the language of poetry.

In the meantime general knowledge was increasing with a wide diffusion and a hasty rapidity. Books began to be multiplied, and a variety of the most useful and rational topics had been discussed in our own language. But science had not made too great advances. On the whole we were now now arrived at that period, propitious to the operations of original and true poetry, when the coyness of fancy was not always proof against the approaches of reason; when genius was rather directed

than governed by judgment; and when taste and learning had so far only disciplined imagination, as to suffer its excesses to pass without censure or control for the sake of the beauties to which they were allied.

THE French possessions on the west coast of Africa having been restored at the general peace, an expedition, consisting of a frigate and three other vessels, was sent in the month of June, 1816, to take possession of them.

Owing to a very relaxed state of discipline, and an ignorance. of the common principles of navigation which would have disgraced a private merchant ship, this frigate, the Meduse, was suffered to run aground on the bank of Arguin. It was soon discovered that all hopes of getting her off must be abandoned, and that nothing remained but to concert measures for the escape of the passengers and crew. Some biscuit, wine, and fresh water,

were accordingly got up and prepared for putting into the boats and upon a raft which had been hastily constructed; but, in the tumult of abandoning the wreck, it happened that the raft, which was destined to carry the greatest number of people, had the least share of the provisions: of wine, indeed, it had more than enough, but not a single barrel of biscuit.

There were five boats. The military had, in the first instance, been placed upon the raft. The number embarked on this fatal machine was not less than one hundred and fifty, making, with those in the boats, a total of three hundred and ninety-seven.

The boats pushed off in a line, towing the raft, and assuring the people on board that they would conduct them safely to land. They had not proceeded, however, above two leagues from the wreck, when they, one by one, cast off the tow-lines. It was afterwards pretended that they broke. Had this even been true, the boats might at any time have rejoined the raft, instead of which they all abandoned it to its fate, every one striving to make off with all possible speed.

At this time the raft had sunk below the surface to the depth of three feet and a half, and the people were so squeezed one against another that it was found impossible to move; fore and aft they were up to the middle in water. In such a deplorable situation, it was with difficulty they could persuade themselves that they had been abandoned; nor would they believe it until the whole of the boats had disappeared from their sight. They now began to consider themselves as deliberately sacrificed, and swore to be revenged of their unfeeling companions if ever they gained the shore. The consternation soon became extreme. Everything that was horrible took possession of their imaginations; all perceived their destruction to be at hand, and announced by their wailings the dismal thoughts by which they were distracted. The officers, with great difficulty, and by putting on a show of confidence, succeeded at length in restoring them to a certain degree of tranquillity, but were themselves overcome with alarm on finding that there was neither chart, nor compass, nor anchor, on the raft. One of the men belonging to M.