ing. Public edification has been postponed to the gratification of private revenge, and thinking men have beheld with astonishment, mingled with regret, talents capable of instructing and pleasing mankind, employed in a warfare in which victory could gain no laurels, nor defeat incur additional disgrace. We feel strongly disposed to say more on this subject. It is every way important, and demands more attention than has hitherto been paid to it. In the mean time, our limits will only permit us to remark, that the cure of the evil lies with that public which is itself the greatest sufferer. Let the silent disapprobation of public opinion (more effectual than a thousand voices) be pronounced against it-let it only be treated with the NEGLECT it deserves -and one of the greatest nuisances of modern literature will disappear. THE UNIVERSE; A POEM. As there can be no doubt, we' think, that Melmoth and the devil are one and the same personage, and, as we are of opinion that Mr Maturin, in the concoction of his late novel, had got into the worst possible company, we are truly happy to find that he has at last abandoned Beelzebub, and betaken himself to poetry: And though we cannot very much felicitate him on the first fruits of his deliverance from the diabolical copartnery, the event was so desirable in itself, and is so likely to be productive of beneficial consequences to the author, that we are content to meet with him on his own terins,"with all his imperfections on his head."-" The Universe! A Poem!" -Our nerves are none of the weakest or most delicate; yet, verily, the title is appalling. From the very nature of things, the Aristotelian rule must here be set at defiance. Where, in the name of criticism and common sense, could he begin with a subject that had no beginning, or finish with that which, being infinite and eternal, can have no end? He has followed no plan-He has given his fancy the rein. His flight is wild and discursive, but indicates a bearing in no particular direction. He sometimes mounts upward, and that on no ignoble wing, but still he is not the eagle seeking to kindle his undazzled eye in a nearer approach to the source of light. As he ascends, the clouds gather around him, and he is soon lost in those mists which he wants brilliancy and splendour to dissipate. His poem is not a whole: any man might as well have tried to cram the solar system into a cockle-shell as to produce a complete and finished poem on such a subject. Far less was this attainable by a writer, like Mr Maturin, who appears to deliver himself up to every thought, conceit, fancy, or whim, that visits his singularly-constituted mind,-without for a moment stopping his course to establish connections, or trace sequences. Accordingly, he has transgressed against grammar, sense, propriety, arrangement, keeping; nay, almost every established canon of criticism. Of his blunders it may truly be said that their name is legion, for they are many." The "Universe is a mere farrago of poetical expressions, ideas, and pictures, aggregated in a rude and undigested mass. Sometimes, indeed, he is fortunate; and, in spite of the notorious carelessness and hurry with which the present poem has been got up, we shall be able to produce not a few very beautiful passages. At other times, again, he raves worse than any poetical bedlamite, and not unfrequently indites arrant nonsense. In this latter attribute, indeed, we had believed that the Pilgrims of the Sun had stood pre-eminent; but, in justice to Mr Hogg, we must confess that the "Universe" beats his "Pilgrims" out and out. The Pilgrims of the Sun is a perfect piece of logic, compared to it. Yet it is but fair to alcided advantage over its rival in fuslow that the Universe" has one detian and fanfaronnade. Unlike the in a luckless hour, discovered that erudite and modest Shepherd, who, ther true nor plain to man," Mr Ma"what the bedesmen say is neiturin takes things as they are, and does not, like Hogg, set about concocting a new system of religion and philosophy, of which system, by the bye, no man was ever able to understand any thing but himself-in such Pythian obscurity are the Shepherd's 66 drives The congregated vapours.-So array'd In manifold radiance, Earth's primeval spring Walk'd on the bright'ning orb, lit by the Hours. And young exulting Elements, undefil'd, And circling, free from tempest, round her calm Perennial brow, the dewy Zephyrs, then, From flower-zon'd mountains wav'd their odorous wings Over the young sweet vallies, whispering joy Then goodliest beam'd the unpolluted bright Divine similitude of thoughtful man, Serene above all creatures-breathing soul Fairest where all was fair,-pure sanctuary Of those sweet thoughts, that with life's earliest breath, Up through the temperate air of Eden rose The comparison of the "shallow sophist" to the "light æronaut, with vacuous orb, ascending past the clouds," is, in our estimation, as beautiful as it is original. Vainly, th' undisciplined or presumptuous mind, Soaring above its terrene element, "Till Earth grow dim, nor gaining sigh oft Heav'n; But moving at the will of wantoning winds, Launch'd without compass-lost in boundless ways! -So fares the shallow Sophist, reasoning From ignorance, impossibility; From his own blindness-all obscurity; Who calls men's passions virtues, and arraigns Omnipotence at their bar;-or more profound, Explores the senseless dust, and magnifies Earth's evanescent atoms into Gods. How didst thou triumph then!-thou us'd'st to steal Behind thy sallow harbinger disease, But there thy spectral visage darken'd forth, Amid the joyous bosom scenes of life, From its invisible ambush! There-it found The myriad fantasies of hearts and brains, Young loves and hopes and pleasures all abroad, Spreading their painted wings, and wantoning In life's glad summer's breeze, from flower to flower! And, with the fatal spell of one dread glance, Blasted them all!-How sunk the tender maid Then silent in the chill and stiffening clasp Of her dead lover! Echo had not ceased To catch love's inarticulate ecstasies, Strained in a first embrace-for ever, then, Fixed statue-like in Death's tremendous arms; A hideous contrast!-One fell moment stilled Lovers and foes alike ;-workers of good, And guilty wretches;-then the statesman's brain Stopp'd in its calculation, and the bard Thronged multitudinous, in their busy time Of civic pomp rose audible from far:- Save the short shuddering cries that rose unheard The upturn'd glances from a thousand homes Thro' the red closing surge! the awful groan Of agitated Nature;-and beneath, Bright sunbeams lit the plain-a nameless name, -Nor was The origin of empires, or their fall,— But the completion of the mighty plan, The fabric of the moral universe That is the world; improvement to the end, Moves in the sleepless track of unknown time, Above the dust of empires. Ancient states Fell into ruin; it was th' earthly frame Of long-subsisting night, the lovely form Of Nature sprung,-last, from the lingering strife Of mind's more active principle, shall grow The beauteous consummation of the plan, That moral world complete! The bird of lives 66 me What does Mr M. mean by a tropolis of starry mansions?" Does he intend us to understand, that the houses of that " metropolis" are built of “ stars?” If this be the case, he may come to have a claim as the author of a somewhat novel discovery in modern architecture. Nobody will accuse him of borrowing the figure from the Apocalypse.-In p. 7 we have the following lines: Earth and all her lowly shores contain Him not, Nor all the myriad orbs that CULMINATE Their wildering brightness DOWN the steep of night! Now, in the first place, this is a plagiarism from Hogg, who somewhere, in his " Solar Pilgrims," talks of a defunct world sent" clattering, (or "wildering," we forget which,) down the steep of night for ever;" and, in the second place, it is both nonsense, and a solecism in language. "To CULMINATE brightness DOWN the steep of night!!"-"To culminate -to be vertical; to be in the meridian," says Dr Johnson. "Culmination, the passage of a star, or planet, over the meridian, or that point of its orbit which it is in at its greatest altitude." (Dr Hutton's Mathematical Dictionary, voce Culmination.) VOL. IX. Culminate from the Equator. These examples, and many others which we could produce, warrant us to tell Mr M. that every man who knows the elements of his vernacular tongue, is aware, that the verb " to culminate" is neuter, not active, as he has blunderingly made it. "To culminate brightness" is, therefore, not English; and "to culminate brightness DOWN" is not philosophy; two subjects with which the author had better make himself acquainted forthwith. (We leave the care of his Latin to the Quarterly.) If the phrase, "to culminate brightness," had any meaning at all, it would be directly the reverse of that affixed to it by this author: it would mean, that "brightness" had been caused to ascend to the highest point of the meridian or the zenith. But let us proceed with our analysis. The "orbs" not only " CULMINATE wildering brightness DOWN," generally, but specially and particularly DOWN the steep of night!" We never knew before that light, or, in the author's phrase, wildering cific, or natural tendency to descend; brightness," had any particular, spe but, be that as it may, had this “wildering brightness" actually descended, or "culminated down," there can be little doubt that it would have produced day, and not night, as the author alleges. We leave the phrase, "the steep of night," without challenge, as it is now somewhat old, being the property, or part and parcel of the property, of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. Again, in p. 10, our author describes a 66 terrible volcano," as exploding its UNDERground artillery OVER affrighted cities." fore he write any more, we beg, that he will have the goodness to study Mr John Horne Tooke's diagram illustrative of the meaning of the prepositions! Where did our author find the word " VASTITUDE?" Be "the VASTITUDE of ruin?" Shakespeare has once, and only once, used the word "vastidity," but even his authority has been deservedly ineffectual in giving it currency. The two following lines are a sort of parodical plagiarism from Hamlet. (The au F thor's unacknowledged appropriations are numerous.) There are in Heaven unbroached calamities, Not dreamt of in the brain of policy. As an instance of the carelessness that pervades the whole of this poem, (manifesting, as it nevertheless does, very considerable power,) we may farther mention, that the author classes Chimborazo among burning mountains. Figures, to be poetically beau tiful, should always be literally just. Chimborazo is no more a burning mountain, than Cader Idris, or Schihallain. We beg to inform Mr M. that Cotopaxi, not Chimborazo, is the volcano to which we presume he meant to allude. Both words have the same number of syllables, and the former is not a whit less poetical than the latter. As to the phrases, " boon time," "the horoscope of space,"-et id genus omne,—we leave their meaning as subjects of speculations to the curious. ORIGINAL POETRY. EDINA, A POEM, IN SIX CANTOS. CANTO I. EDINA aid my lays, why need we fly We care not for the gay lascivious dance O heavenly graces-You the muses nine, Who every bard with rapture can inspire, The beaux, the shepherds, and the lawyers dire, A novelist, when he begins to write, Must paint the scenery, the time of day, These mighty incidents, like him pourtray 'Twas on a winter day, suppose at two O'clock, past noon; the sky was pure and bright, As Billy is our man, we can't do less Than give a brief description of the beau; Are held by connoisseurs as quite the go, |