the following apostrophe to the late Bishop Berkley?-the Emerald 'And Berkely, thou, in vision fair, And, in it, own that thou could'st view The following invocation to Farquhar, on the comedy of the Recruiting Serjeant, which was finished in his last illness, is a fine specimen of the grandiloquence in which Mr. Phillips delights to envelop the commonest ideas. 'Swan of the stage! whose dying moan Such dulcet numbers poured along, That Death grew captive at the tone, And stayed his dart to hear THE SONG!'-I.-36. The song! what song? Serjeant Kite's is the only one we recollect in the piece; which, for a dying moan,' is comical enough. Every one remembers Cooke the actor. He was remarkable for playing one or two parts with considerable force and skill, but his general character, even as a player, was certainly not very pre-eminent. He had, however, it seems, the good fortune to be an Irishman, and accordingly hear in what numbers Mr. Phillips lauds him. 'Lord of the soul! magician of the heart! How all the passions in succession rise, Beguiled by thee, old Time, with aspect blythe,' &c. &c. 1.-39. and so forth for six lines more, with which we will not afflict our readers. We shall conclude our poetical extracts with the description of a traitor, which will remind our readers of some of the most splendid passages of Lord Nugent's Portugal. the traitor's impious soul Blasphemes at grace and banishes control; Deifies guilt and mortgages its God!'-I.-67. We shall now give a few instances of the nonsense on stilts, which Mr. Phillips believes in his conscience to be English prose; and however he may differ from us in his opinion of their merits, we venture to assert that he will not accuse us of having selected the worst passages. Magna est veritas et prevalebit-is a trite proverb, and no very complicated idea; yet this simple sentence is in Mr. Phillips's ver sion bloated out to the following size. Truth is omnipotent, and must prevail; it forces its way with the fire and the precision of the morning sun-beam. Vapours may surround, prejudices may impede the infancy of its progress; but the very resistance, that would check, only condenses and concentrates it, until at length it goes forth in the fulness of its meridian, all life, and light, and lustre-the whole amphitheatre of Nature glowing in its smile, and her minutest objects gilt and glittering in the grandeur of its eternity.'-III.-20. Goldsmith had compared his Parish Priest To some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm; Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, This is one of the most simple and sublime passages in English poetry: Mr. Phillips-who, by the way, is as great a plagiarist as Sir Fretful, and somewhat in his manner-thus adopts it as his own. The hand that holds the chalice should be pure, and the priests of the temple of Religion should be spotless as the vestments of her ministry. Rank only degrades, wealth only impoverishes, and ornaments only dis figure her; her sacred porch becomes the more sublime from its simplicity, and should be seated on an eminence, inaccessible to human passions-even like the summit of some Alpine WONDER, for ever crowned with the sunshine of the firmament, which the vain and feverish tempest of human infirmities breaks through harmless and unheeded.' III.-34. 6 In this same style of travestie, Mr. Phillips renders either unin telligible or ridiculous every thing he touches. He censures Mr Grattan because,' as he elegantly expresses it, an Irish native has lost ITS raciness in an English atmosphere.'-II.-15. When he alludes to Monseignor Quarantotti's letter, he will not condescend to mention it but as the rescript of Italian audacity.' When the Duke of Wellington invades France, we are told that an Irish hero strikes the harp to victory upon the summit of the Pyrenees.'-p. 35. And when he would say that Mr. Grattan is an ornament to his country, it is expressed that he poured over the ruins of his country the elixir of his immortality'!-III.-35. When some judicious persons at Liverpool toast the health of this wild ranter, he modestly and intelligibly describes the effect which this great event will have in Ireland • Oh! yes, I do foresee when she (Ireland) shall hear with what courtesy her most pretentionless advocate (Mr. Phillips) has been treated, how the same wind that wafts ber the intelligence, will revive that flame within ber, which the blood of ages has not been able to extinguish. It may be a delusive hope, but I am glad to grasp at any phantom that flits across the solitude of that country's desolation'!!— V.-2. There is, it seems, a certain Irishman of the name of Casey resident in Liverpool, and, we presume, he was one of the promoters of the before mentioned toast; for Mr. Phillips, after a magnificent description of this worthy gentleman, exclaims, in an agony of patriotism, Alas, Ireland has little now to console her except the consciousness of having produced such men'-as Mr. Casey of Liverpool! We reserve for the last example of Mr. Phillips's style, two passages which, we are informed by Mr. Phillips himself or his editor, (if indeed Mr. Phillips be not his own editor,) were received with enthusiastic applauses. The first is meant to be a satire on bigotry, and the other a panegyric on Mr. Grattan But oh! there will never be a time with Bigotry-she has no head, and cannot think-she bas no heart, and cannot feel when she moves, it is in wrath-when she pauses, it is amid ruin-her prayers are cursesher God is a dæmon-her communion is death-her vengeance is eternity -her decalogue is written in the blood of her victims; and if she stoops for a moment from her infernal flight, it is upon some kindred rock to whet ber vulture-fang for keener rapine, and replume her wing for a more sanguinary desolation!'-III.—22. When the screech-owl of intolerance was yelling, and the night of bigotry was brooding on the land, he came forth with the heart of a hero! and the tongue of an angel! till, at his bidding, the spectre vanished; the colour of our fields revived, and Ireland, poor Ireland,' &c. &c.-III.-14. Such-to speak figuratively of this great figure-maker-such are the tumid and empty bladders upon which the reputation of Mr. Phillips is trying to become buoyant. We believe our readers will, by this time, think that we have fully justified our opinion of the style of this Dublin Demosthenes. But we have something more than mere errors of style to object to Mr. Phillips; we shall say little of the want of professional ability which his two pleadings exhibit, because he so little intends them to be considered as legal arguments, that there is but one passage in the statement of two legal cases in which there is the slightest allusion to the law, and that allusion only serves to show the advocate's ignorance of, and contempt for, the more serious parts of the profession he was exercising. Do not suppose I am endeavouring to influence you by the power of DECLAMATION. I am laying down to you the British law, as liberally expounded and solemnly adjudged. I speak the language of the English This is one poetry: Mr. I Sir Fretful, an • The hand the temple of! Rank only de figure her; city, and sh passions-e crowned wit tempest of I III.-34. In this telligible Grattan has lost 1 he allude scend to When t an Irish Pyrene is an or the rui Wh this w which y: he is, if you and decision, a with be warmed Lest our Again, he assures his partial friends 'who were crowding around ..., that no act of his shall ever raise a blush at the recollection of ir early encouragement.'-page 16. But it is not the easy virtues of profession alone to which Mr. llips lays claim-he boasts, in a quotation, solemnly prepared for ... occasion, that he is ready even to suffer for his country:For thee, fair freedom, welcome all the past, For thee, my country, welcome E'EN THE LAST!' Notwithstanding the present thriving appearance of Mr. Phils's patriotism, he seems to have now and then had some slight sgivings as to the constancy of his virtue, and to anticipate Possibility of backslidings from this high way of honour, and with most ingenuous naïveté he communicates his doubts to the tholic Board. May I not be one of the myriads who, in the name of patriotism, for the purposes of plunder, have swindled away your heart, that y might gamble with it afterwards at the political hazard table! May not pretend a youth of virtue, that I may purchase with its fame an e of rich apostacy!-Cast your view around the political horizon—n you discover no one whose eye once gazed on glory, and whose ice once rung for liberty--no one, who, LIKE ME, once glowed with *** energies of an assumed sincerity, and saw, or seemed to see, no God COUNTRY, now toiling in the drudgeries of oppression, and shroudin the pall of an official miscreancy! Trust no man's professions-ent as I am honest through every fibre as I feel myself-1 repel your dence, though perhaps unnecessarily, for I am humble, and below uption-I am valueless, and not worth temptation-I am poor, and not afford to part with all I have-MY CHARACTER.-Such are my sations now-what they may be hereafter, I pretend not; but should ver hazard descending into the sycophant or slave, I beseech thee, saven, that the first hour of crime may be the last of life, and that worm may batten on the bloom of my youth, before my friends, if have one, shall have cause to curse the mention of my memory.'— 'I.-11, 12. Mr. Phillips's first publication, in the still earlier bloom of his youth, was, as our readers have seen, a poem called the Emerald sle. It was dedicated, by permission, to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, Ireland's Hope and England's Ornament.' The poem did not belie the promise of the dedication; it is a perfect stream of praise, a shower of roses on every person who is named in it, from alpha to omega. This alone was enough to excite some little suspicion of the author's sincerity; but it became conviction on finding that, whenever in any of his succeeding pamphlets written in altered times and different circumstances, he has occasion to VOL. XVI. NO. XXXI. C |