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dal, who, or witnessing such brutality, would not lend a foot to kick him down stairs, and a hand to fling him into the moat among the barbels.

As for the diction, it is equally destitute of grace and power-and not only without any colouring of beauty, but all blotched and varnish, laid on as with a shoe-brush. All sorts of images and figures of speech crawl over the surface of the Sequel, each

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shifting for itself, like certain animalculæ set a-racing on a hot-plate by a flaxen-headed cowboy; and though there are some hundreds of them, not one is the property of Mr Tupper, but liable to be claimed by every versifier from Cockaigne to Cape Wrath.

Let us turn, then, to his ambitious and elaborate address to Imagination, and see if it conspicuously exhibit the qualities of the poetical character.

"Thou fair enchantress of my willing heart,
Who charmest it to deep and dreamy slumber,
Gilding mine evening clouds of reverie,-
Thou lovely Siren, who with still small voice
Most softly musical, dost lure me on
O'er the wide sea of indistinct idea,
Or quaking sands of untried theory,
Or ridgy shoals of first experiment,

That wind a dubious pathway through the deep,—
Imagination, I am thine own child:
Have I not often sat with thee retired,
Alone yet not alone, though grave most glad,
All silent outwardly, but loud within,

As from the distant hum of many waters,
Weaving the tissue of some delicate thought,
And hushing every breath that might have rent
Our web of gossamer, so finely spun?
Have I not often listed thy sweet song,
(While in vague echoes and Æolian notes
The chambers of my heart have answered it),
With eye as bright in joy, and fluttering pulse,
As the coy village maiden's, when her lover
Whispers his hope to her delighted ear?"

Imagination is here hailed first as a "fair enchantress," then as a "lovely siren," and then as the poet's mother "I am thine own child." In the next paragraph-not quoted-she is called "angelic visitant;" again he says, "me thy son;" immediately after, "indulgent lover, I am all thine own;" and then

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Imagination, art thou not my friend, In crowds and solitude, my comrade dear, Brother and sister, mine own other self, The Hector to my soul's Andromache

These last lines are prodigious nonsense; and we could not have believed it possible so to burlesque the most touching passage in all Homer. Nor can we help thinking the image of Martin Farquhar Tupper, Esq., M. A., author of " Proverbial Philosophy"

"With eye as bright in joy, and fluttering pulse,

As the coy village maiden's"

rather ridiculous-with Imagination sitting by his side, and whispering soft nothings into his ear.

"With still small voice" is too hal-
lowed an expression to be properly
applied to a "lovely siren;" nor is it
the part of a siren to lure poets on
"O'er the wide sea of indistinct idea,

Or quaking sands of untried theory,
Or ridgy shoals of fit experiment,
That wiad a dubious pathway through
the deep."

We do not believe that these lines have
any real meaning; and then they were
manifestly suggested by two mighty
ones of Wordsworth-

"The intellectual power through words and things

Went sounding on its dim and perilous way."

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Is all on flame, a censer filled with odours,
And to my mind, who feel thy fearful

power,

Suggesting passive terrors and delights
A slumbering volcano," &c.

Here the heart of Imagination is-if
we rightly understand it-the burning

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bush spoken of in the Old Testament -a censer filled with odours and a slumbering volcano! That is not poetry. But here comes to us an astounding personification—which we leave, without criticism, to be admired if you choose.

Thy dark cheek,
Warm and transparent, by its half-formed dimple
Reveals an under-world of wondrous things
Ripe in their richness,-as among the bays
Of blest Bermuda, through the sapphire deep,
Ruddy and white, fastastically branch
The coral groves: thy broad and sunny brow,
Made fertile by the genial smile of heaven,
Shoots up a hundred fold the glorious crop
Of arabesque ideas; forth from thy curls
Half hidden in their black luxuriance
The twining sister-graces lightly spring.

The Muses, and the Passions, and Young Love,
Tritons and Naiads, Pegasus, and Sphinx,

Atlas, Briareus, Phæton, and Cyclops,

Centaurs, and shapes uncouth, and wild conceits:
And in the midst blazes the star of mind,
Illumining the classic portico

That leads to the high dome where Learning sits:
On cither side of that broad sunny brow

Flame-coloured pinions, streaked with gold and blue,
Burst from the teeming brain; while under them
The forked lightning, and the cloud-robed thunder,
And fearful shadows, and unhallowed eyes,
And strange foreboding forms of terrible things
Lurk in the midnight of thy raven locks."

Here and there we meet with a rather goodish line-as for example66 Thou hast wreathed me smiles, And hung them on a statue's marble lips." And again

"Hast made earth's dullest pebbles bright like gems."

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And still better, perhaps

Screened from the north by groves of rooted thoughts."

You admire it?-then probably you will admire this too

"So, too, the memory of departed joy, Walking in black with sprinkled tears of pearl,

Hast lengthened out my nights with Passes before the mind with look less

life-long dreams."

We are willing, but scarcely able, to
be pleased with the following image:
"First feelings, and young hopes, and
better aims,

And sensibilitics of delicate sort,
Like timorous mimosas which the breath,
The cold and cautious breath of daily life,
Hath not, as yet, had power to blight or

kill

From my heart's garden; for they stood retired,

stern,

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"As the wild chamois bounds from rock to rock,
Oft on the granite steeples nicely poised,
Unconscious that the cliff from which he hangs
Was once a fiery sea of molten stone,
Shot up ten thousand feet and crystalized

When earth was labouring with her kraken brood;

So have I sped with thec, my bright-eyed love,
Imagination, over pathless wilds,

Bounding from thought to thought unmindful of
The fever of my soul that shot them up
And made a ready footing for my speed,
As like the whirlwind I have flown along
Winged with ecstatic mind, and carried away,
Like Ganymede of old, o'er cloud-clapt Ida,
Or Alps, or Andes, or the ice-bound shores
Of Arctic or Antarctic,- stolen from earth
Her sister planets and the twinkling eyes
That watch her from afar, to the pure scat
Of rarest Matter's last created world,

And brilliant halls of self-existing Light."

We call that bad. Like a cha- an avalanche, though we are aware mois like a whirlwind-like Ganymede ! Shew us a flight-without telling us what it is like-and leave us to judge for ourselves whether or no you are a poet and can fly.

Does Imagination inspire "The Song of an Alpine Elf?" The Alpine Elf sings

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My summer's home is the cataract's foam,

As it floats in a frothing heap; My winter's rest is the weasel's nest, Or deep with the mole I sleep." We daresay there are moles and weasels among the Alps, but one does not think of them there; and had Mr. Tupper ever taken up a weasel by the tail, between his finger and thumb, he would not, we are persuaded, have conceived it possible that any Elf, accustomed to live during summer in the froth of a cataract, would have been "so far left to himself" as to have sought winter lodgings with an animal of such an intolerable stink. And what are the Alpine Elf's pursuits?

I ride for a freak on the lightning streak, And mingle among the cloud, My swarthy form with the thunder-storm, Wrapp'd in its sable shroud."

A very small thunder storm indeed would suffice to wrap his Elf-ship in its sable shroud; but is he not too magniloquent for a chum of the mole and the weasel ? What would be the astonishment of the mole to see his bed-fellow as follows

"Often I launch the huge avalanche, And make it my milk-white sledge, When unappalled to the Grindlewald I slide from the Shrikehorn's edge." By his own account he cannot be much more than a span long-and we are sceptical as to his ability to launch

that avalanches hold their places by a precarious tenure. However, the sight of so minute a gentleman sliding unappalled on a huge avalanche from the Grindlewald to the Shrikeborn's edge, would be of itself worth a journey to Switzerland. But what a cruel little wretch it is! not satisfied with pushing the ibex over the precipice, he does not scruple to avow,

"That my greatest joy is to lure and decoy

To the chasm's slippery brink,
The hunter boid, when he's weary and old,
And there let him suddenly sink
A thousand feet-dead! he dropped
like lead,

Ah! he couldn't leap like me;
With broken back, as a felon on the rack,
He hangs on a split pine tree."
Why shove only the old hunter over
the chasm? Twould be far better
sport, one would think, to an Alpine
elf, to precipitate the young bride-
groom. "Ha! he couldn't leap like
me," is a fine touch of egotism and
insult-and how natural!

"And there mid his bones, that echoed with groans,

I make, me a nest of his hair; The ribs dry and white rattle loud as in spite,

When I rock in my cradle there: Hurrah, hurrah, and ha, ha, ha!

I'm in a merry mood,

For I'm all alone in my palace of bone, That's tapestried fair with the old man's hair,

And dappled with clots of blood." At what season of the year. Dur ing summer his home is in a "frothing heat;" during winter he sleeps with the weasel or moudy-warp. must be in spring or autumn that he makes his nest in a dead man's hair. How imaginative!

It

Turn we now to a reality, and see how Mr. Tupper, who likened himself

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"He thought what fear it were to fall Into the pit that swallows all,

Unwing'd with hope snd love; And when the succour came at last, O then he learnt how firm and fast Was his best Friend above."

That is much better than any thing yet quoted, and cannot be read withBut out a certain painful interest. the composition is very poor. "O heaven!

He hath leapt in !" Well-what then? "and down he falls?" Indeed! We do not object to "between those blue tremendous walls," but why tell us they were "standing asunder riven?" We knew he had been on the edge of the "chasmed ice." "O moment of exulting bliss!" No-no-no. "Many a rood"-perpendicular altitude never measured by roods nor yet by perches. Satan "lay floating many a rood"-but no mention of roods when "his stature reached the sky." "His head grows dizzy"-aye that it did long before the fifteen hours had expired. "But stop, O stop" is, we fear, laughable-yet we do not laugh -for tis no laughing matter-and "never in life give up your hope" is at so very particular a juncture too general an injunction. "Be cool,

man, hold on fast" is a leetle too much, addressed to poor Pierre, whose "half dead hands were ice," and who had been hanging on by them for fifteen hours.

"And so from out that terrible place, With death's pale paint upon his face, They drew him up at last"

is either very good or very bad-and we refer it to Wordsworth. The con

cluding stanzas are tame in the ex

treme;

"For many harrowing terrors ran Through his poor heart that day!" We can easily believe it; but never after such a rescue was there so feeble an expression from poet's heart of religious gratitude in the soul of a sinner saved.

The "African Desert" and "The

Suttees" look like Oxford Unprized Poems. The Caravan, after suffering the deceit of the mirage, a-dust are aware of a well.

Hope smiles again, as with instinctive haste The panting camels rush along the waste,

1

And snuff the grateful breeze, that sweeping by
Wafts its cool fragrance through the cloudless sky.
Swift as the steed that feels the slacken'd rein
And flies impetuous o'er the sounding plain,
Eager as, bursting from an Alpine source,
The winter torrent in its headlong course,
Still hasting on, the wearied band behold
-The green oase, an emerald couch'd in gold!
And now the curving rivulet they descry,
That bow of hope upon a stormy sky,
Now ranging its luxuriant banks of green
In silent rapture gaze upon the scene:
His graceful arms the palm was waving there
Caught in the tall acacia's tangled hair,
While in festoons across his branches slung
The gay kossom its scarlet tassels hung;
The flowering colocynth had studded round
Jewels of promise o'er the joyful ground,
And where the smile of day burst on the stream,
The trembling waters glittered in the beam."

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1 Eager as bursting from an Alpine source The winter torrent in its headlongcourse;" for there should have been no allusion to water any where else but there the groan and the cry was for water to drink; and had Mr Tupper felt for the caravan, men and beasts, no other water would he have seen in his imagination-it would have been impossible for him to have thought of likening the cavalcade to Alpine sources and winter torrents he would have huddled it all headlong, prone, or on its hands, hoofs, and knees, into the water of salvation. "The green oase, an emerald couched in gold!!" Water! Water! Water! and there it is!

"That bow of hope upon a stormy sky!!" They are on its banks—and

"In silent rapture gaze upon the scene!!",

And then he absolutely paints it! not in water colours-but in chalks. Graceful arms of palms--tangled hair of acacia-scarlet tassels of kossoms in festoons-and the jewels of promise of the flowering colocynth!!!

Stammering or stuttering, certainly is an unpleasant defect-or weakness in the power of articulation or speech, and we don't believe that Dr Browster

could much mend it; but some of the most agreeable men we know labour under it, and we suspect owe to it no inconsiderable part of their power in conversation. People listen to their impeded prosing more courteously, and more attentively, than to the prate of those "whose sweet course is not hindered;" and thus encouraged, they grow more and more loquacious in their vivacity, till they fairly take the lead in argument or anecdote, and are the delight and instruction of the evening, phy, or politics. Then, a scandalous as it may hap, in literature, philoso story, stuttered or stammered, is irresistible every point tells and blunt indeed, as the head of a pin, must be with a jerk from the tongue-tied, sharp that repartee that extricates not itself as the point of a needle.

his sympathy with the "stammerer," We beg to assure Mr Tupper, that would extort from the lips of the most swave of that fortunate class, who, it must be allowed, are occasionally rather irritable, characteristic expressions of contempt; and that so far from thinking their peculiarity any impediment, except merely in speech, they pride themselves, as well they may, from experience, on the advantage it gives them in a colloquy, over the glib. If to carry its point at last be the end of eloquence, they are not only the most eloquent, but the only eloquent of men. No stammerer was ever beaten in argument-his opponents always are glad to give in-and often, after they have given in, and suppose their submission has been accepted, they find the contrary of all that from a

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