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placing the icy hand of secular power on the Church of Godby fostering the increase of wealth, and by chaining the poor man to his poverty-by all these, and by similar means, may the whole social system above the poor and working man be rendered oppressive and odious to him, and liable to speedy and terrible destruction. We have shown how some of these fatal tendencies may be changed,-how our legislation may adopt others of a happier sort; and he must entertain a more contemptuous and slighting opinion of the vaunted wisdom and enlightenment of our age and senators than we can own to, who, looking back at the past annals of England, surveying the present condition of the country, and scrutinizing the temper and intelligence of the people, shall arrive at the desponding conclusion,

"Truth would you speak, or save a sinking land,

All fear, none aid you, and few understand."

239

CRITICAL SKETCHES.

ART. IX.-Love's Legends: Adhemar's Vow: Bertha: The Peri. Poems by Archer Gurney. Mitchell. 1845.

THIS is emphatically the "Age of Iron." They who live in it, and would, ere leaving, carve their name-ciphers on the Obelisk of Fame, must seek a tablet of firestone amid the smelting furnaces of a railfactory, or take their alternative and die like a dog-to be buried tombless.

Unlucky the man who in these regenerate days has nothing of the mechanic in him-no spice of the "operative" in his compounded clay! What though he "can neither spin, nor reap," is he nevertheless without his uses? Not so: yet they are of a quality not in demand-scarcely in estimation, unless they be born of the mine, and nourished at the stock-mart.

Poetry is a drug; why, therefore, will men persist in "exhibiting" their samples of "simples?" The pill won't go down, gild it as you may not even the "antique story" that is musty with the mould of ages, redolent of primeval vigour and freshness proper to lusty juvenescence-the freshness of the soul-is ever now heard in this our land of anvil-strokes and piston-puffs, if it come not in the typetailoring of arabesques, and all sorts of bedizenments in the shape of tickets of introduction, stamped, like broad-arrow marks of outlay and pocket-expenditure, in every page. Goethe perhaps offered the true solution to this enigma, when he affirmed in the frankness of what he calls "Confession," that no man can act against his natural impulsewe must be always removing our candlesticks from under the bushels of concealment, even though they contain rushlights only; and when a man has achieved verses, he must cackle about them out loud, like a hen that has laid an egg-they must "go to print"-they must, at the least, be no worse off than any thing that Sternhold and Hopkins ever did-" appointed to be said and sung" in every tabernacle of the kingdom-in short, the poet persuades himself

"He must proclaim them, sad or sweet,

Be they a torment, be they a treat."

Coleridge it was, who maintained that the composition of poetry was for him its own "exceeding great reward." No doubt of it! So it would be to any man who possessed the peculium of so well appointed an officina musarum as was his. So long as that Apelles of poetry could evoke the glowing embodiments of his fancy, and clothe them in such creations as Christabel, the "lovely ladye," and Genevieve, with the suffused eye, so sweetly gliding, what further recompence could he de

sire? Who can deny that it is far better to dissolve in dreams like these, than to sit eating the sorrel of sour labour, in the "sober certainty of waking" spleen? Who would not feed on crumbs, beggar-fashion, with Belisarius, than hunger in ermine with the Seventh Harry? and yet, we say unto you, young poets! that he who writes poetry to live (quite another thing from living to write poetry) had better wrap himself at once in the decent composure of a dying Cæsar, whilst the strength is in him, and the yet untattered purple about his body, lest the asp of despair eat into his heart's core, and his Muse, as did the handmaiden of Egypt's Queen, prove the officious minister to his mortal throes. But this is preaching.

The author of the unpretending volume before us is not "unknown to fame." Mr. Archer Gurney has already acquired what the heralds of the old tournaments were wont to call "los," in the service of the Muse he has, if we recollect aright, broken a spear in the "tilt-yard at Westminster," on a very memorable occasion, when one of the marshals of the lists, with his leaden baton, smote our champion cruelly about the nose-bridge; but his "beaver" was not "up," and he recoiled not from his saddle-seat, notwithstanding the buffet. Then rose he in his stirrups, and reached his assailant, with his life-preserver, such a lunge into the fifth rib, that the sound thereof was heard beyond the barriers, and the heavy-batoned marshal was fain to withdraw privily, forlorn and discomfited; and he has never been heard of since that day.

The Dame in whose behalf this "derring-do" was enacted, was, we beg our readers to observe, no other than the famous "Helena" ot Troy-or rather, of Goethe-in whose service Mr. Gurney had, like a true knight, enlisted himself to do battle, as her champion in the English tongue. Is it to be marvelled, therefore, that, like all who ever swore homage to that peerless Beauty, he should have had to fight for her against contesting claimants and rivals for her smiles assailing him on all sides?

Now what on earth should our author's translation of the book called "Helena," and the criticisms and contentions thereanent, have to do with the subject of these pages? Just this: he who has once accomplished a good thing, in letters (and if, as one Will Shakspeare hath it, it be "a kind of good thing, to say well"-how much better a kind of thing it must be, to write well!) and rests contented with his effort, ever after must submit to the imputation (howsoever undeserved) of belonging to the Zephyr-breed of aromatic men, who philander with the Muse, for want of opportunity, and having, at length, and by accident as it were, obtained it by meeting her "once a maying," have been permitted to "fill her with a daughter fair;" so, consummated their destiny, and straightway have died, even as the ephemeræ are fabled, of exhaustion. Now, in order to gainsay this anticipatory verdict, and to prove, præmissis non obstantibus, that the "man's a man for a' that," and not a mere leaf-grub that lives just so long as the mulberry is green-(for, we have it on Martial's authority,

"Consumpto moritur pulex salicto")

such a man (you will observe) is impelled into print as speedily as may be after his first plunge, to the end that he may, by striking out arms and legs, left and right, give evidence of his undiminished force, and show to all and sundry interested in the spectacle, how he is still able and willing to put forth his powers upon the adequate occasion, notwithstanding the experience of former captious critic-handling, be it for Helena, or be it for Glumdalclutch-for anything, in short, having a long petticoat, and the word "muse" bound for philactery about her front—and this, we take it, is the test of true chivalry, in whose presence, still, "Love is the theme," as is proved by divers passages (the title-page in especial) of the book before us-" and a hacknied theme, too!" growls the cynic. Nay, by the rood! a delicate theme, and a dainty! most dainty and delicate-yea, by the mass! he who doubteth hath only to read this book of Mr. Gurney's, which may be very fitly designated a perfect pocket Froissart of pretty little picked chronicles pertaining to the erotic Lady, and her son Dan Cupid, "the hero of a hundred fights," and more valiant than a Gaston de Foix, or the Beau Sabreur of my Lord Buonaparte.

« Χαλεπον το μη φιλησαι,

Χαλεπον δε και φιλήσαι,
Χαλεπωτερον δε παντων,

Αποτυγχάνειν φιλοῦντα,"

wrote the Tean bard a thousand years and more ago, and posterity has affirmed his judgment:

"O love! thou may'st dawn from affliction and gloom,

As roses from darkest graves spring;

No heart can resist thee-thy whisper is doom:

Thou art soft as the cradle, and deep as the tomb,
And all things thy majesty sing."

(Gurney-Adhemar's Vow, p. 17.)

And yet, despite Anacreon and Mr. Gurney, the ladies who love, are, nevertheless, not of equal force, numerically, with those who are beloved for does not every man jack of us fall into very inextricable love every Spring season-(wenn die Stimme der Liebe erwacht!-as we once heard old Blumenbach's centenary squeak ejaculate, before his panting class, on a hot summer's eve)? for so it is, we are all of us desperate, until we recover, by means of much senna, and specifics that grew not in the time of Ovid, when the disease was nulla medicabilis herba.

It grieves us much that we cannot offer to our readers some few of the many very sweet passages we had marked for extract from "Adhemar's Vow," and also from the second poem, "Bertha, a legend of Germany." The opening stanzas of this last are as fine as any thing of Freiligrath's, and are, indeed, very much after the manner of that popular lyric poet of modern Germany. All, except "The Peri," are of chivalric sinew in conception and in execution. Purity of thought, propriety of diction, and an earnest endeavouring after that ideal of beauty, which the fervid Keats pronounced to be "a joy for ever" to him who once should possess it, are conspicuous throughout

the pages of this little outpouring from the Helicon of a heart warm as the "sweet South, that gently breathes on banks of violets." The muse of Mr. Gurney is well able to take captive the surrendered sense, and set one a pondering the words of old-fashioned Monsieur de Malherbe :

"Ces vieux contes d'honneur, invisibiles chimères ;

Qui naissent aux cerveaux des maris et des mères,
Estoient-ce impressions qui pussent aveugler un jugement si cler ?"

ART. X.-Spain, Tangier, &c. Visited in 1840 and 1841.
X. Y. Z. London: Clarke, Pall Mall. 1845.

By

A MORE amusing book of Travels we have seldom or never met with. There is a playful sprightliness, a kindly "bonhommie," a quantum of such strong common sense to be found within this volume, that no reader will regret the hours which he devotes to its perusal. The views of the author (or rather authoress) are generally just and moderate. Indeed, if any fault is to be found, they may be said to err upon the side of moderation. Never, however, has Spain been more graphically described, more clearly placed before us, with her rancid oil, her banditti, her muleteers, her painters, her cities, her deserts, and her-what not, in fine? The Pyrenees are admirably delineated in the commencement of the work. It is impossible for words to give a more graphic notion of natural scenes than has been offered by the author of these letters in the opening contrast drawn betwixt the Pyrenees and the Alps. The lively anecdotes which are interspersed throughout these pages serve, too, to give a charming effect to the whole. Here is an amusing incident. The travellers mount by night one of the steepest heights of the Pyrenees, to view the sunrise from the summit. The ascent is one of great difficulty and danger. On the peak (that "du Midi de Bigorre") they found-or, to continue ipsissimis verbis,

"we found an individual, who we learnt had reached the top very early to be in time for the Sunrise. What think you of this being, who, when told the orb of day was about to appear, refused to get up to look at what he had come so far to see. He was too sleepy! Must I own the individual was an Englishman?"

Here is a most graphic picture of Spain, which, alas! has lost much of its ancient glory :

"Accordingly, since the 29th of last month, behold us, in the centre of thi 'land of love, romance, and glory,' so called; but alas! the spirit of Don Quixote seems to have flown up with him and his squire to the moon, when they took their renowned trip to that crazed luminary, and not to have come down again. "Tis true, 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true.' The gallant night serenaders have vanished, guitars and all, with petticoat Ferdinand, black inquisition, and jolly monks. A traveller may no longer enjoy the pleasing excitement of picking up dead bodies under fair ladies' casements; or of being carried off some fine night into a pitiless dungeon, without friend or foe knowing what has become of him. Alas! for these

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