longed quarantine, felt very uneasy to resume business. They beguiled their evenings by walking on the terraces, the tops of the houses being all, or principal ly, flat. When the quarantine ceased, they hastened eagerly to learn the fate of their friends, in the same manner as sailors hurry below after battle, to see how many of their messmates have survived to share in the dream of glory! "Before leaving Malta, I had the melancholy satisfaction of standing on the ruins of the plague-hospital, which had been burnt to ashes-that place where so many hopes and fears were hushed to rest! It gave rise to dismal re collections! "May none of my readers ever behold the miseries of the plague, or endure the lingering tantalization of the quarantine! THE FATE OF ADELAIDE, A SWISS ROMANTIC TALE; AND OTHER POEMS. BY LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON. LONDON. WARREN, 1821. THIS juvenile performance Miss Landon has inscribed to Mrs Siddons, as an expression of " her gratitude," she has not told us-for what. The fair author makes so modest, yet so fervent an appeal to the "candour" and "kindness" of persons of our fraternity, that though her performance had possessed far less merit than we are happy to find it does, we could not have been so hardhearted as to utter almost a syllable of censure. The poetry, however, is far superior to the story, which is neither very natural, nor very dextrously managed. This is the effect of inexperience, and will be in a daily process of rectification, as the author's mind is enlarged and confirmed. We rejoice to find in so young a writer such an enthusiastic love of the beauties of nature. This is the sure mark of a pure mind. We extract the following lines addressed to the author's countryman, Sir John Doyle, Bart: "My heart has beat high at the heroes of old, As they live in those annals of fame, Where the deeds of their glory are glow. ingly told, When history has hallow'd their name. "It was pride, as I thought on those sunbeams of yore, Like vessels of light on oblivion's dark seas, To pass o'er those ages, and think my own shore Had many, whose names would shine brightly as these. "Who has not proudly dwelt on those memories of light, And felt them, like something that glorified earth? Who has not exclaim'd, with a burst of delight 'Tis my own native land which has given them birth! "Yes, warrior! 'tis only high spirits like thine, That teach man the generous path he may tread; convenient rule" malignum spernere vulgus," whenever the opinions of that respectable body happen not to be in unison with my own: and therefore I have no hesitation in confessing, that I have not so complete ly put away childish things, as to be incapable of renewing over these fascinating fictions the pleasures I derived from them in earlier years. I feel, in their perusal, my old inclination for wonders and enchantments revive; " agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ ;" and am almost tempted to lament, as Voltaire has done in these naïve and beautiful lines, that I was born an age too late to enjoy them in perfection : "O l'heureux tems, que celui de ces fables Des bons demons-des esprits familiers, I need scarcely say, that I do not here allude to those flimsy Eastern Tales, and moral apologues, which were once so much in fashion in the days of Addison; which called forth the sarcasm of Pope on those "Who turn a Persian tale for half-acrown ;" and in which the very sight of the names of Omar, and Ali, and Hassan, et hoc genus omne, comes over one like a wet blanket, and gives a promise, which is in general religiously observed, of tediousness and pompous inanity. I speak of those undoubted productions of Eastern imagination, which, though they have certainly undergone some changes to suit them to European taste, have reached us in sufficient preservation, and perhaps gained by the change+; of those tales which have so long formed the amusement of youth, and to which the man of taste and ima gination can still recur with pleasure, and feel with Byron, that, in its sus Contes de Guilliaume Vadé. +"Et parurent," says a French poet, "En sortant de chez Barbin Plus Arabe qu'en Arabie.” ceptibility to the impressions of poetry and fiction, "the heart can never all grow old." How far this effect is to be ascribed to the real merit of these tales is perhaps difficult to decide. The remembrance that they pleased us once, is a strong reason why they should please us again. They are, besides, so interwoven with early recollections-they open so surely, and yet so tenderly, the sources of that pleasing melancholy which these recollections excite, that it becomes no easy task to resolve our pleasure into its component elements, and to say how far it is to be ascribed to the intrinsic merit of these tales, and how far to the accidental associations which they awaken.-It is with them as with the favourite haunts of our childhood and our youth. While a stranger can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and declare that it is all barren, or, at most, can see only, in the scene that charms us, a pleasing and variegated prospect, we connect a thousand feelings with every object in the landscape, and read, in every ings as enduring as our existence. rock and every tree, the record of feelclined to give to the power of these But whatever weight we may be inassociations, we cannot surely be insensible to the real merits of these tales-the interest and variety of the narrative the force, vivacity, and splendour of the descriptions-and the graceful and imaginative nature of their supernatural machinery.There is something to me more permanently pleasing in the light graces of Eastern fiction, than in the gloomy severity of the Gothic. Not that I am at all disposed to deny the powers of the latter. I rather think with Sir Roger de Coverley, that a good deal may be said upon both sides; and, those whom Mr Campbell denounces laud the gods, that I am not one of as exclusionists in taste! I have one of those voracious appetites for fiction, which reduces to chyle the most heterogeneous substances, and which can turn without much difficulty from the Genii, the Peris, the Dives, and Enchantments of the East, to the spectres and witches of Northern superstition. Yet I confess, that, after losing myself amidst the "chimeras dire" of a Gothic romance, "the thousand fantasies Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, And airy shapes, that syllable men's names On sands, and shores, and desert wilder. ness," I have felt, in turning to the graceful fictions of Araby, like Sinbad when he emerged from the darkness and vapour of the vault in which he had been buried with his wife, into the beauty and brightness of day. Gothic fiction, like Gothic architecture, is massive, solemn, and shadowy, like the objects viewed through the "dim religious light" of painted windows. The Arabian fictions are light and fanciful, as their fantastic edifices, crusted with ornaments, and glittering with spires, minarets, and porticoes. I can easily imagine that the lovers of strong excitement, the admirers of the "exacerbation of sensation," will find these tales lifeless and insipid. The true votaries of the terrible, who like no stories so well as those which dissolve them "almost to jelly with the act of fear," and make them feel, with Miss Baillie's Orra, "The icy scalp of fear upon their head"The life stir in their hair" will meet with nothing to gratify their favourite propensity. Here are few of those scenes of high-wrought passion and pictures of terror which hurry on the mind till it seems to become breathless in the chace. No "wild huntsmen"-" spectre horsemen"—and the other dramatis personæ of German dæmonology "the midnight yell Of spectre hounds, and eke the spectre shapes Of huntsmen on their sable steeds, with A nobler huntsman riding in the van, When wanes her horn, in long October nights." may at least have wonders to their heart's content. He who is fond of exploring subterraneous caverns may indulge his propensity with Aladdin. If he rather likes to soar than sink, he may take an airing with Prince Firouz Schah, on the brazen horse of the Indian, which beats Ariosto's Hippogriffs all to nothing. If he desires a still more luxurious conveyance, Prince Houssain offers to accommodate him with a seat on his carpet. Does he wish to cultivate a better acquaintance with the inhabitants of Ocean? King Saleh and Queen Gulnare will be happy to do him the honours of their aquatic empire. Is he a believer in the second sight? Prince Agib is ready to gratify him in his own way with a peep through his telescope. If nothing but spells will serve his purpose, he may turn his brain among the multiplied enchantments of the Arabian Proteus, Maugraby; or, if he can be contented with the humbler wonders of Sinbad's voyages, that veracious mariner will read him a tale ❝of moving accidents by flood and field,” as authentic as those of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, and Sir John Mandeville. Of these wonderful tales the finest seems to me to be that of Aladdin. I remember I was perfectly fascinated by it on its first perusal. I could think and speak of nothing else. I might, if I could have read Latin at the time, have parodied the conclusion of Cicero's encomium on the fine arts, and applied it to my own case: "Delectant domi, non impediunt foris, peregrinantur, rusticantur.” It was my delight at home-no impediment abroad-my pocket companion when I went to walk, or into the country. Even now I certainly think it would be no easy matter to produce such another effort of imagination-wonders of every kind-incidents the most varied and original— descriptions the most splendid and imposing, are dealt out, not grudgingly or of necessity, but with all the prodigality of inexhaustible wealth. In addition to the interest of the machinery, which is certainly original and striking in the highest degree, that of the human agents in this brilliant spectacle is admirably ma naged, and shows that the Arabians understand the arts of contrast and relief as well as ourselves. The first adventure of Aladdin with the insidious magician-the scenes of poverty under the humble roof of his mother-the bright contrast which is presented by his sudden elevation the dangers to which the revenge of his old enemy, the magician, expose him-and the triumphant success with which he at last baffles his schemes, hurry on the mind with increasing interest from the commencement to the conclusion, and form a whole with which every admirer of fiction must be delighted, while human feelings remain as they are, or poetry retains its influence. A sophistical friend of mine, who deals largely in paradox, once attempted to convince me, that all this seeming fertility of imagination only argued a weakness and poverty of invention that ignorance of human nature, and inability to render a story interesting upon rational principles, were the real causes which induced the Arabian Novelists to call in, on any occasion, the aid of supernatural agents, and to cut the knot which they were too indolent to unloose. Were we acquainted with no Arabian Tales but those which are conducted by such agency, the objection would certainly be plausible; but as the case stands, nothing can be more unfounded. We are in possession of Arabian Tales in which no such machinery is employed whose incidents spring entirely from the ordinary sources of human action, and which, for variety of interest, genuine humour, and even successful character-painting, (though this is not a common quality of Arabian fiction), may safely be compared to those of the best European Novelists. I am convinced, that those who entertain such ideas of Arabian Tales, have only to read the story of Abn Hassan, in the Arabian Nights, or that of Xailoun in the continuation, to confess their error. The first of these tales is really a masterpiece. The character of Abn Hassan is a finished sketch of bonhommie. We feel quite at home with him before we have been five minutes in his company, and sympathise heartily in his wish to punish VOL. IX. the hypocrital Imaum of the Mosque, and the four old Grey-beards, whose School for Scandal gave him so much annoyance. Nothing can be better than his behaviour during his temporary Caliphate; his gradual doubts of his own identity, settling at last in the conviction, that he was really the person he represented; the gravity with which he bears his blushing honours, and the delight with which he orders the bastinado to his old tormentors, the Imaum and his satellites. I confess I don't so much relish the more tragical scenes in the mad-house, where he is cured of his golden dreams by the application of the bastinado; and can't help thinking with the Caliph, that this was really carrying the joke too far. The conclusion of the story, however, is not inferior to the commencement. His feelings, when he finds himself again under the influence of his first illusion; his prayer to be delivered from the delusions of the devil-"God confound thee, Satan, and crush thee under some mountain of stones!"the description of his unexpected evolutions, which convulse the Caliph with laughter, and produce the denouement of the story; and his concluding device for raising the wind after his marriage—are all in the finest style of humour and nature. The story of Xailoun is perhaps less natural, but not less ludicrous, than that of Hassan; and if a reader can "be moved to smile at any thing," his muscles will sustain a severe trial at the disasters of the idiot. Besides their intrinsic merit as compositions, these Tales are valuable on other accounts. The influence of Arabian fiction upon the literature of Europe is greater than most readers imagine. Many of the Fabliaux of the Trouveurs were confessedly of Oriental origin; and those who have amused themselves with tracing the progress of these Tales, through Boccaccio, Sacchetti, Ser Giovanni, Bandello, Malespini, and the other longwinded gentlemen of the "Conciosiacosache" School, down to Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakespeare, and our early Dramatists, will entertain juster notions of their literary importance. I can appeal to any one who has glanced over the series of Italian novels, whether the 3 M Cadis, the numerous characters which pass before us in this brilliant Asiatic procession, are all touched with that vivacity and spirit, which at once convince the reader, that if they are not individual portraits, they are at least most faithful representatives of the species. What an insight do we thus acquire into the private life of the inhabitants of the East-the character of its despotism-the dull and listless amusements of its palaces and its harems-the hypocrisy of its religions—and the corruption of its legal establishments! In short, I might appeal to any one, whether he does not acquire a more intimate acquaintance with Oriental manners, from these Tales, than from a hundred "Voyages Pittoresques," or ponderous quartos. tales which they have thus borrowed are not the most interesting in the collection; and whether the dullness and obscurity of those which are of their own invention, are not most inadequately compensated, by their happening to be "written in very choice Italian." The ingenious Warton has directed his attention to another branch of the subject, and has endeavoured to trace back to Eastern sources, the origin of all the wonders and enchantments of the old romances of Chivalry, and their legitimate offspring, the romantic poems of Italy. There is certainly much elegance and ingenuity in his speculations; and, on the whole, I should be inclined to adopt his system, as solving most difficulties, with least appearance of straining and effort. It is true, a later system attempts to And here, Mr Editor, I pause. The prove this machinery to be entirely matter-of-fact reader, who judges of of classical origin; and, to identify every thing by the application of his the enchanters, the invulnerable" cui bono," may probably find even heroes, and the winged steeds and monsters of Chivalry, with the Circe, the Achilles, the Chimera, &c. of antiquity. This is all very plausible and ingenious; and, as Tristram Shandy says of one of his father's hypotheses, "I have little other objection to it, but that it overturns my own." Even the gravest reader must admit, that these Tales are valuable, as conveying to us a vivid picture of that people whom they describe. We are here admitted behind the scenes. We trace their characters, drawn by themselves, with a minuteness and graphic fidelity, to which the pen or the pencil of the traveller cannot pretend. Caliphs, Sultanas, Dervises, Calendars, Merchants, Slaves, Imaums, the last of these reasons but unsatis- "On a banni les Demons et les Fées- SPECIMENS OF "WALLACE," A MS. TRAGEDY. "There's theme enough in Caledonian story, Is there no daring bard will rise and tell How glorious Wallace stood, how hapless fell ?" AN Individual, whose national feelings somewhat resemble those of Burns, (the story of Wallace" having infused "a Scottish prejudice into his veins, which will boil along there, till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest," has presented us with a Tragedy founded on the history of the Scottish Hero. It is in manuscript, has not experienced the inglorious doom of rejection, either by publisher or manager, and, being literary property, entirely our own-is hence perfectly unique. Acting upon those |