Sylv. Then talk not thus ;

Though but a jest, it makes me tremble.
Jeron. Jest?

Look in my eye, and mark how true the tale
I've told you: On its glassy surface lies
Death, my Sylvestra. It is nature's last
And beautiful effort to bequeath a fire
To that bright ball on which the spirit sate
Through life; and look'd out, in its various moods,
Of gentleness and joy and love and hope,
And gain'd this frail flesh credit in the world.
It is the channel of the soul: Its glance
Draws and reveals that subtle power, that doth
Redeem us from our gross mortality.

Sylv. Why, now you're cheerful.

Jeron. Yes; 'tis thus I'd die.
Sylo. Now I must smile.

Jeron. Do so, and I'll smile too.

I do; albeit-ah! now my parting words
Lie heavy on my tongue; my lips obey not,
And-speech-comes difficult from me. While I can,
Farewell. Sylvestra! where's your hand?

Sylv. Ah! cold.

Jeron. 'Tis so; but scorn it not, my own poor girl.
They've used us hardly: Bless 'em though. Thou wilt
Forgive them? One's a mother, and may feel,

When that she knows me dead. Some air-more air:
Where are you?—I am blind-my hands are numb'd:
This is a wintry night. So,-cover me. [dies]."

The extract we are now about to lay before our readers from the tale of Diego de Montilla will scarcely be recognised as the production of the same Author. Whether this arises from the versatility or the limitation and misdirection of the Author's powers, we leave them to decide.

The octave rhyme (Ital. ottava rima)

Is a delightful measure made of ease

Turn'd up with epigram, and, tho' it seem a
Verse that a man may scribble when he please,

Is somewhat difficult; indeed, I deem a

Stanza like Spenser's will be found to teaze
Less, or heroic couplet; there, the pen
May touch and polish and touch up again.
But, for the octave measure-it should slip
Like running water o'er its pebbled bed,
Making sweet music, (here I own I dip

In Shakspeare for a simile) and be fed
Freely, and then the poet must not nip

The line, nor square the sentence, nor be led
By old, approved, poetic canons; no,
But give his words the slip, and let 'em go.

• I mean to give in this same pleasant rhyme
Some short account of Don Diego de
Montilla, quite a hero in his time,

Who conquered captain Cupid as you'll see :
My tale is sad in part, in part sublime,

With here and there a smack of pleasantry;
As to the moral, why-'tis under cover.
I leave it for the reader to discover.'

Diego was a knight, but more enlighten'd

Than knights were then, or are, in his countree,
Young, brave (at least, he'd never yet been frightened)
Well-bred, and gentle, as a knight should be:
He played on the guitar, could read and write and
Had seen some parts of Spain, and (once) the sea.
That sort of man one hopes to meet again,
And the most amorous gentleman in Spain.
The Don Diego (mind this, Don Diego:
Pronounce it rightly,) fell in love. He saw
The daughter of a widow from Tobago,

Whose husband fell with honour: i. e. War
Ate up the lord of this same old virago,

Who strait returned to Spain, and went to law
With the next heir, but wisely first bespoke
The smartest counsel, for that's half the joke.

The lady won her cause; then suitors came
To woo her and her daughters: she had two:
Aurelia was the elder, and her name,

Grace, wit, and so forth, thro' the country flew
Quicker than scandal: young Aurora's fame-
She had no fame, poor girl, and yet she grew
And brightened into beauty, as a flower
Shakes off the rain that dims its earlier hour.

Aurelia had some wit, and, as I've said,
Grace, and Diego lov'd her like his life;
Offer'd to give her half his board and bed,
In short he woo'd the damsel for a wife,

But she turned to the right about her head,

And gave some tokens of (not love but) strife;
And bade him wait, be silent, and forget

Such nonsense: He heard this, and lov'd her yet.'

A man has no right to expect that we should be at the pains of toiling through fifty or sixty stanzas of such dull trifling as this, in order to get at some few beautiful lines which he has chosen to conceal amid the rubbish. But we must do our Author this act of charity.

· O melancholy Love! amidst thy fears,

Thy darkness, thy despair, there runs a vein
Of pleasure, like a smile 'midst many tears,-
The pride of sorrow that will not complain-

The exultation that in after years

The loved one will discover—and in vain,
How much the heart silently in its cell
Did suffer till it broke, yet nothing tell.

Else-wherefore else doth lovely woman keep
Lock'd in her heart of hearts, from every gaze
Hidden, her struggling passion-wherefore weep
In grief that never while it flows allays
Those tumults in the bosom buried deep,

And robs her bright eyes of their natural rays?
Creation's sweetest riddle !—yet remain
Just as thou art; man's only worthy gain.

And thou, poor Spanish maid, ah! what hadst thou
Done to the archer blind, that he should dart
His cruel shafts till thou wast forced to bow
In bitter anguish, aye, endure the smart
The more because thou wor'st a smiling brow
While the dark arrow canker'd at thy heart?
Yet jeer her not: if 'twere a folly, she
Hath paid (how firmly paid) Love's penalty.
• Oft would she sit and look upon the sky,

When rich clouds in the golden sun-set lay
Basking, and loved to hear the soft winds sigh
That come like music at the close of day
Trembling amongst the orange blooms, and die
As 'twere from very sweetness. She was gay,
Meekly and calmly gay, and then her gaze
Was brighter than belongs to dying days.

And on her young thin cheek a vivid flush,
A clear transparent colour sate awhile:

'Twas like, a bard would say, the morning's blush,
And round her mouth there play'd a gentle smile,
Which tho' at first it might your terrors hush,

It could not, tho' it strove, at last beguile;
And her hand shook, and then 'rose the blue vein
Branching about in all its windings plain.

The girl was dying. Youth and beauty-all
Men love or women boast of was decaying,
And one by one life's finest powers did fall
Before the touch of death, who seem'd delaying,
As tho' he'd not the heart at once to call

The maiden to his home. At last, arraying
Himself in softest guise, he came she sigh'd,

And, smiling as tho' her lover whisper'd, died.'

This last stanza is exquisitely beautiful; and the whole passage, although it does not display any remarkable originality or power of thought, is written with much taste and feeling; qualities which in our estimation far outweigh that wit and humour in

which our Author is so palpably deficient. It is but justice, too, to Mr. Barry Cornwall to state, that he confesses himself to have had some hesitation in laying this poem and Gyges,' which together occupy a third of the volume, before the public at all. We gather from this that he is not satisfied with his own performance, and we think the more highly of his judgement on this account. No doubt, he will have many readers to whom such dull drollery will be more palatable than better poetry; but if he wishes to write poetry that shall not only sell but live, he will do well to leave the ottava rima to the inimitable and detestable Author of Don Juan,* and to William and Robert Whistlecraft. Marcian Colonna is a disgustingly horrible and unnatural story. The Author tells us that his original intention was, to paint the fluctuations of a fatalist's mind touched with insanity,' but that this intention has been in some measure departed from.' We should never have guessed at his purpose, most assuredly; nor do we perceive any trace of it. There is some ingenuousness in telling the public, The poem is not what I intended to make it, I could not manage the thing;' but we should have thought more highly of his discretion, had he kept his own secret. To what extent the public would in that case have been the loser, let the following extract say.

6

He spoke "Dear Marcian I"-"How soft she speaks,"
He uttered: "Nay-" (and as the daylight breaks
Over the hills at morning was her smile,)

"Nay you must listen silently awhile.
"Dear Marcian, you and I for many years

Have suffered: I have bought relief with tears;
But, my poor friend, I fear a misery

Beyond the reach of tears has weighed on thee.
What 'tis I know not, but (now calmly mark

My words) 'twas said that-that thy mind was dark,
And the red fountains of thy blood, (as Heaven
Is stained with the dying lights of Even,)
Were tainted-that thy mind did wander far,
At times, a dangerous and erratic star,
Which like a pestilence sweeps the lower sky,
Dreaded by every orb and planet nigh.
This hath my father heard. Oh! Mar-ci-an,
He is a worldly and a cruel man.” ›

No modern bard, however, has handled this measure with more ease and dexterity than William Tennant, the author of Anster Fair; and he was, we believe, the first who availed himself of it as adapted to serio-comic poetry. The only difference between Tennant and the much-bepraised Whistlecraft, is, that in Anster Fair the stanza of Fairfax is shut up with the Alexandrine of Spenser.

This last couplet almost rivals that of good John Bunyan in his Emblems :

• Moses was a fair and comely man,

His wife a swarthy Ethi-opi-an.'

Marcian Colonna abounds with such ingenious rhythmical varieties. Thus, sometimes, we have the conjunction and made to sustain the weight of the rhyme :

The masters of the world have vanished, and Thy gods have left or lost their old command.' Sometimes, the relative:

'save some sad few

(Like him imprison'd and devoted,) whoOr still better, a preposition :

He was the youngest of his house, and from
His very boyhood a severer gloom'

Again:

'Her shape and voice fell like a balm upon
His sad and dark imagination?'

His mother fondly kissed

Her eldest born, and bid him on that day
Devote him to the dove-eyed Ju-li-A !!''

This last rhyme is of frequent occurrence; and it is abundantly evident, that the instances we have selected, far from being marks of carelessness, are most deliberately and gravely put forth as specimens of free and accomplished versification. The silly affectation of singularity and utter want of ear which they betray, merit nothing better than contempt. But we cannot persuade ourselves that the genuine Barry Cornwall is responsible for the poem from which they are taken. The name is generally understood to be a feigned one, and for any thing that we know to the contrary, there may be more than one person whom it suits to wear the domino. If our suspicions are wellfounded, the real Barry has either had a most unkind liberty taken with his shadowy property, or has committed an act of most magnanimous and self-denying friendship. If they are not, the deterioration of taste, ear, and judgement which the latter productions of the same nominal author exhibit, will remain wholly unaccounted for and unaccountable. We can judge fairly of a writer's powers, only by taking into consideration his best productions and his worst. Were we to throw

out of our estimate all the bad writing in the volumes before us, what would be left might seem to entitle the Author to rankwe do not say immeasurably above the adventurous young bard with whom he has been accidentally thrown into competition by the choice of the same subject for one of his poems-but to