and Elidure: they are seeing the procession from some distance. In the main action of his poem, a poet by tacit compact is allowed to be omniscient and all-seeing; we allow him to tell us what is passing in the hearts even of his personages, and never ask how he learned the secret. But his personages themselves are not so unlimited; they can only be allowed to see, hear, and know, according to the faculties of their nature. Now in the present instance the procession is not the main action, but it bears the same relation to it which a picture introduced in a picture, or a play in a play, bear respectively to the picture or play which contain them; that is to say, they are wholly subordinate to them. The poet then must divest himself of his own unlimited faculties, and describe nothing relating to the procession, which those who are the main subjects could not have seen and heard. But, to mention one instance of the violation of this rule, it is clear that Samor and Elidure could not from the place of their concealment have heard Vortigern moan the name of Merlin-this therefore should have been omitted. A more obvious, and less pardonable fault remains to be commented on in the denunciation. Here again it is Mr. Milman who speaks, and not Merlin-it is the youthful poet, high in spirits, rioting in the luxuriance of words and ideas, and delighting to toss them about in point and antithesis, not the aged, woe-begone, and austere prophet. If we can be sure of any thing that is matter of taste and judgment, we are sure that the denunciation should have been short and solemn; the poet has made it long, brilliant, and ironical. Irony is always a dangerous weapon, but in epic poetry especially the mightiest master should strike but a single blow with it, it can scarcely ever be in his hands safely for more than an instant at a time. Mr. Milman has used it once or twice with success, but what can we say to such lines as these, among many others?

'I see the nuptial pomp, the nuptial song

I hear; and full the pomp, for Hate, and Fear,
And excellent Dishonour, and bright Shame,
And rose-cheek'd Grief, and jovial Discontent,
And that majestic herald, Infamy,
And that high noble Servitude, are there,
A blithesome troop, a gay and festive crew.
And the land's curses are the bridal hymn;
Sweetly and shrilly doth the accordant isle

Imprecate the glad Hymenæan song.'—p. 40.

Statius might have written such lines, but if, as we think probable, Mr. Milman took the first hints of his incident from the awful douwv #gola of the Agamemnon, or the mournful elegy of Andromache,

either Eschylus or Euripides might have taught him a more discriminating observation of character.

The friends pass on, and fulfil their commission; but Constans, as might be expected, refuses the crown, and tenders a ready allegiance to his brother Emrys. Free however as he was from worldly ambition, his royal primogeniture made him an object of suspicion in those disjointed times to the king and the Saxons— the peasant who visited him on the following morning, found him murdered, and resting on his cross. This whole interview is very pleasingly told; but it is open to a remark which, even at the expense of being thought too minute, we must venture to make. The true poet never sacrifices accuracy of reasoning or description for the sake of increasing a particular effect. In applying this rule, we must of course be careful to distinguish those passages in which he identifies himself with his personages under any strong state of feeling, when all nature assumes the colouring given by that feeling, and all things are reasoned upon under its impression. The rule must be confined to places, where the poet reasons or describes propriâ personâ. Statius, in his beautiful address to sleep, wishing to produce a general impression of the calm and silence of night, mentions the rivers as flowing with a softer sound; the lines are excellently translated by Mr. Hodgson.

'Hush'd is the tempest's howl, the torrent's roar,

And the smooth wave lies pillowed on the shore.' We may be sure that Virgil never would have done this, he would have described truly what he heard, and in the general silence of the night the torrent would have seemed to roar more loudly than by day.

In the third book the scene changes; Caswallon joins the enemies of his country according to his threat, and accompanies Hengist in a voyage to the north, which that chief undertakes for the double purpose of consulting his gods upon the issue of the war, and collecting reinforcements from the tribes of Germany. Here Mr. Milman is on very strong ground, ground upon which he has even now scarcely any superior, and upon which we would fain hope that by and by he may have no equal. In the voyage he has scattered a great deal of rich and varied description; the calm, the brilliant and sunny gale, the breeze that freshens almost to tempest, the lowering sky and adverse weather, when,

When the voyage ends, the two chieftains mount a rein-deer car, and depart still farther northward for the residence of the Valkyrs, the immortal maids, who rule the present, the past, and the future. No one can read this part of the poem without a conviction of the poet's powers-there are passages which would bear comparison with the pictures drawn by the magic pencil of Southey in Thalaba or Kehama. After the sublimer scenery of the ice-mountains, softer scenery is introduced-fanciful indeed, but not extravagant, where all is but the creation of a rich imagination.

'Nor wants soft interchange of vale, where smiles
White mimicry of foliage and thin flower.
Feathery and fanlike spreads the leafy ice
With dropping cup, and roving tendril loose,
As though the glassy dews o'er flower and herb
Their silken moisture had congeal'd, and yet
Within that slender veil their knots profuse
Blossom'd and blush'd with tender life; the couch
Less various where the fabled Zephyr fans
With his mild wings his Flora's blooming locks:
But colourless and cold, these flowering vales
Seem meeter for decrepit Winter's head

To lie in numb repose.'-p. 57.

The Valkyrs themselves are admirably drawn, and the first conception of them, as æthereal, passionless, bloodless, beautiful, yet unattractive beings, is perfectly well sustained throughout.

"No sights, no shapes of darkness and of fear.
Tremblingly flash'd the inconstant meteor light
Shewing thin forms, like virgins of this earth,
Save that all signs of human joy or grief,
The flush of passion, smile, or tear had seem'd
On the fix'd brightness of each dazzling cheek
Strange and unnatural; statues not unlike
By nature in fantastic mood congeal'd
From purest snow, the fair of earth to shame,
Surpassing beauteous: breath of mortal life
Heav'd not their bosoms, and no rosy blood

Tinged their full veins, yet mov'd they, and their steps
Were harmony.'-p. 57.

By desire of Caswallon, Hengist addresses Skulda,' queen of the future,'

Her

"Valkyr, hear and speak,

Speak to the son of Woden!"-All the troop
Instant the thin bright air absorb'd, alone
Stood Skulda, with her white air waving wide,
As trembling on the verge of palpable being,
Ready to languish too in light away.'—p. 60.

answers, on the whole, are unfavourable-she tells Hengist,

VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVIII.

that

that his, but not he himself, shall reign over Britain, and that the man whom he is to fear shall come from the valley and not from the mountain. Caswallon demands, by what rite he may propitiate Woden, and is ordered to send a virgin to join the Valkyr in heaven; the infatuated savage instantly devotes his own daughter. At this A hue like joy

Overspread all her face and form, while slow

Into the air she brightened, indistinct

Even now, and now invisible.'-p. 61.

During their absence, the heralds of Hengist had summoned from all parts the brave and adventurous to join in the conquest of Britain. There is little to praise, and something to censure, in the catalogue which ensues; the united host embarks, and the fleet anchors in the mouth of the Tyne in the beginning of spring.

Caswallon, it may be remembered, had devoted his daughter to death; she had lost her mother in her infancy, and his cold neglect, and savage contempt of every thing feminine, had deprived her in effect of her father. He delighted only in the promise and prowess of young Malwyn, and left Lilian to absolute solitude, in a castle in the north. She is a beautiful and most attractive modification of Southey's Laila; the passage that describes her is almost too long for quotation, but we are unwilling to shorten it.

she the while, from human tenderness
Estrang'd and gentler feelings, that light up
The cheek of youth with rosy joyous smile,
Like a forgotten lute play'd on alone
By chance-caressing airs, amid the wild
Beauteously pale and sadly playful grew,
A lonely child, by not one human heart
Beloved, and loving none; nor strange, if learnt
Her native fond affections to embrace
Things senseless and inanimate; she lov'd
All flow'rets that with rich embroidery fair
Enamel the green earth, the odorous thyme,
Wild rose and roving eglantine, nor spar'd
To mourn their fading forms with childish tears.
Gray birch and aspen light she lov'd, that droop
Fringing the crystal stream, the sportive breeze
That wanton'd with her brown and glossy locks,
The sunbeam chequering the fresh bank. Ere dawn,
Wandering, and wandering still at dewy eve,
By Glenderamakin's flower-empurpled marge,
Derwent's blue lake, or Greta's wildering glen.
Rare sound to her was human voice, scarce heard,
Save of her aged nurse, or shepherd maid
Soothing the child with simple tale or song.

Hence

Hence all she knew of earthly hopes and fears,
Life's sins and sorrows-better known the voice
Belov'd of lark from misty morning cloud
Blithe carolling, and wild melodious notes
Heard mingling in the summer wood, or plaint
By moonlight of the lone night-warbling bird.
Nor they of love unconscious-all around
Fearless, familiar they their descants sweet
Tun'd emulous. Her knew all living shapes
That tenant wood or rock: dun roe or deer,
Sunning his dappled side at noon-tide, crouch'd
Courting her fond caress; nor fled her gaze

The brooding dove, but murmur'd sounds of joy.'-p.70–72. The conception of this character is perhaps a little improbable,— -but we confess that there is something in Lilian which disarms our criticism, and we think that Mr. Milman's readers for the most part will have the same feeling. In her deep retreat, Vortimer, the son of Vortigern, had by accident found, and conceived a romantic attachment for the romantic girl, which she warmly returned. We are not told why this mutual flame was not imparted in due form to the father; but lovers are fond, it is said, of bye-roads to their happiness, and Vortimer's visits were stolen and concealed. It was now long since she had seen him--indeed he had been engaged among the foremost of the British in their attacks on Horsa and the Saxons, and had mainly contributed to the successes which had cooped the invaders up in the isle of Thanet. Lilian now expected him; and walking at fall of eve by the Eamont at the accustomed place of meeting-she hears the tramp of a horse approaching, and 'pranks her dark brown tresses' in the flowing stream to meet his eyes. Instead of Vortimer a much less agreeable object appears before her, her stern and unnatural father, who seizing her roughly, and placing her on his steed, departs in awful silence. Thus far the story is as well told, as conceived; but as our readers will have already observed, Mr. Milman too commonly fails, when his personages begin to speak. It is rather singular, that while he speaks of them, he puts himself, with great truth and force, into their situations, but when they speak for themselves, they uniformly almost put themselves into his; and though nature would require but the fewest, the simplest, the most solemn words to utter their deep distress, or their painful auxiety, they run wild in a display of all his invention and fertility. Lilian, as her father bears her off, faintly demands whither he is carrying her, and is sternly answered, To death.' A situation more overpowering to a young female like Lilian can scarcely be conceived, and the reader, who knows the horrid vow of Caswallon, and his relentless nature, is fully prepared to participate in her agony. Such feelings will be somewhat

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