reflective cast, and the causes of that mysterious kind of pleasure which often attends its indulgence."

Why loves the muse the melancholy lay?
Why joys the bard, in autumn's closing day,
To watch the yellow leaves, that round him sail,
And hear a spirit moan in every gale?

To seek, beneath the moon, at midnight-hour,
The ivied abbey, and the mouldering tower,
And, while the wakening echoes hail his tread,
In fancy hold communion with the dead.' p. 7.

Such a disquisition, however, would have been of a kind too
metaphysical to assume, very gracefully, a poetical dress, and
the author has certainly judged wisely in satisfying himself
with the contemplation of some of the various sources of this
solemn but tender temperament of mind, and pointing out
some of those effects which are likely to proceed from its indul-
gence. In pursuing this course of thought, an opportunity
is offered for delineating some of the most interesting scenes of
nature, as well as many of those diversified situations which
arise out of the ever-shifting train of human events, and which
are adapted to awaken, or nourish this tranquil musing pro-
pensity. The subject is obviously interesting, and very sus-
ceptible of high poetic colouring. It is, in its nature, cal-
culated to touch the feelings of the reader, and therefore, if a
competent degree of skill and talent be employed in pre-
senting it to him, is sure to arrest his attention, and give
rise to many pleasurable emotions and reflections. To perceive
the beauties, and appreciate the merits of lyric, the dra-
matic, or the epic Muse, something more than taste and
susceptibility is frequently requisite an acquaintance, for
instance, with history, antiquities, or mythology.
topics, such as those that have been specified, are familiar
to every mind. They come home to the "bosom and business"
of the reader, and with the associations which they excite he is
always prepared to sympathize. Who has not paused
with mingled awe and delight, when some bold moun-
tain-view, or the magnificence of the wide-spread ocean,
has suddenly arrested his attention? Who has not tasted the
"joy of grief," while bending over the tomb of a departed rela-
tive or friend? And whose recollection has not hovered with
sweet, though mournful pleasure, over scenes and situations ren-
dered sacred by our earliest and fondest associations? The pro-
duction before us, accordingly, abounds with images which
"find a mirror in every mind," and they are, for the most
part, sketched with an elegant, and, not unfrequently, with
an impressive pencil. Take, for example, the following de-
scription of a cataract in frost.

But

• More wildly sweet nor less sublime, the scene,
When winter smiled in cloudless skies serene,
When winds were still, and ice enchained the soil,
O'er its white bed to see the cataract toil.

The sheeted foam, the falling stream beneath,

Clothed the high rocks with frost-work's wildest wreath a
Round their steep sides the arrested ooze had made
A vast, fantastic, crystal colonade:

The scattering vapour, frozen ere it fell,

With mimic diamonds spangled all the dell,

Decked the grey woods with many a pendant gem,
And gave the oak its wintry diadem.' p. 16.

Or the following representation of the effect of music, on a mountain-lake, in the evening.

Thine are the lute's soft-warbled strains that wake

The twilight echoes of the mountain-lake,
When silent nature drinks the plaintive lay,
When not a ripple strikes the pebbly bay,
When the reflected rock lies dark and still,
And the light larch scarce trembles on the hill.
The wanderer's feet, o'er foreign steeps that roam,
Pause at the strains that soothed his native home:
Fond fancy hears, in every changeful swell,
The tender accents of the last farewell;
Recalls, in every note, some wild-wood shade,

Some cherished friend, some long-remembered maid.'

In commenting on the salutary influences of this cast of mind, the author remarks that it is friendly to the evolution of genius, and that the fine arts owe their most pleasing and powerful impressions, to their partaking of the same character;-that the social affections derive from this sentiment their most endearing ties ;-that it reigns in the charities which seek out and relieve distress ;-and that, while it sooths and softens, it also tranquillizes the mind, by familiarizing it to the contemplation of vicissitude, and thereby rendering it superior to calamity, and leading it to perceive that the existence of some portion of evil, is indispensable to the general good, and perfectly compatible with that unerring wisdom which preserves in harmony the whole system of created brings. A single specimen of the manner in which the poet illustrates this part of his subject may be sufficient. Blest is the sigh, the answering sigh endears, And sweet the solace of commingling tears. The stoic frost, that locks their source, destroys The purest spring of nature's tenderest joys. The hermit cell, the spangled domes of pride, Alike uncharmed, unsoftened by their tide,

Can yield no balm of that divine relief,
That flows in love's participated grief.

Oh mutual love! thou guardian power, bestowed
To smooth the toils of life's unequal road!
Thou! whose pure rose preserves, in wintry gloom,
The unchanging sweetness of its vernal bloom,
Sheds richer fragrance on the winds that rave,
Shoots in the storm, and blossoms on the grave!
Thou! whose true star, amid the tempest's night,
Streams through the clouds imperishable light,
More brightly burns, when wilder whirlwinds sweep,
And gilds the blackest horrors of the deep!
If e'er in woodland-shade by Cynfael's urn,

Thy altar saw my votive incense burn,
May thy propitious star, thy deathless flower,

Illume my path, and twine iny rustic bower.' pp. 41-42.

With the utmost disposition, however, to applaud Mr. Peacock, it is impossible not to see that his poem has many faults. The story of Rinaldo and Rosaura, though told with a good deal of simplicity and tenderness, is on the whole so very like a hundred others of the same kind, which the reader may meet with in every common writer of romance, that it fails to excite any deep interest. There is more originality of conception in the episode which concludes the third part of the poem, but its effect is, we think, very much diminished if not entirely spoiled, by the introduction of an extravagant fiction, which represents a tree as springing from the ashes of a funereal urn, and animated by the spirit of which those ashes were the corporal receptacle. This marvellous relation is surely by no means of a piece with the character and design of a sentimental poem, which proposes to take truth and nature as the sole basis of its theme.

There is also a tolerable sprinkling of minor defects in this poem. We meet with many flat and prosaic lines; and could point out instances in which sense is occasionally sacrificed to sound; and others which shew, as Dr. Johnson expresses it, "how resolutely a rhyme is sometimess made, when it cannot be found."-With what propriety is man's Sovereign strength' made the object of the verb relume'? And how can a cheek' respire'? But, in truth, Mr. Peacock still seems to indulge a lurking fondness for shewy finery, and sweet pretty nonsense; and is never "most melancholy" without being at the same time "most musical."

On the whole, however, The Philosophy of Melancholy' has afforded us gratification. It is the peculiar design of the poet's art, at once to interest the imagination, and to awaken the affections of the reader; and to the degree of

success with which these objects are combined, will the meed of poetic honour be proportioned. Both of them are attained, we think, with a considerable degree of felicity, by the author of the present work. The concluding passage is perhaps the best.

• From him all beings wake, in him they rest,
The first, the last, the wisest and the best.
From him the sounding streams of fire are given,
The firm-set earth, the planet-spangled heaven,
The ambient air, the billowy occean's might,
One power, one spirit, one empyreal light.
He rules and circumscribes this mundane ball,
Combines, dissolves, restores, arranges all.
His voice from chaos in the birth of time,
Drew beauty, order, harmony sublime;
When love, primeval night's refulgent child,

Sprang forth in circling flight, and gazed, and smiled,
And o'er the spheres, new-rolled from nature's strife,

1

Shook from his golden wings the ambrosial dews of life.'

The mythological ode, which turns upon the triumph of Mahometanism over the religion of the magi, is a pretty fair specimen of that species of inditing-which to say the truth, is usually about as wearisome as it is unintelligible.

Art. VII. An Appeal to the Gospel, Or an Inquiry into the justice of the charge alleged by Methodists and other objectors, that the Gospel is not preached by the National Clergy. In a series of discourses delivered before the University of Oxford in the year 1812, at the lecture founded by the late Rev. J. Bampton, M. A. Canon of Salisbury. By Richard Mant, M. A. Vicar of Great Coggeshall, Essex; and late Fellow of Oriel College. 2nd. edition. 8vo. pp. 540. Rivingtons. 1812.

THE objects of Mr. Mant's attack, in this volume, are the

Methodists, in the largest acceptation of that term. In this line of argument he has of late had many coadjutors. Somewhat more vague, zealous, and declamatory than any of them, Mr. Mant makes greater pretensions to candour and fair dealing, and is equally chargeable with illiberality and misrepresentation: he is more haughty and brow-beating, without possessing better arguments or more skill in urging them; and congratulates himself on victory in a louder tone, though he has been equally unsuccessful in breaking the ranks of the enemy, or driving them from the field. His purpose is to show, that the body of the national clergy preach the doctrine of scripture, in its purity, without alloy or abatement. And in order to effect this object, he proposes to contrast the principles of the orthodox clergy with those of methodistical

or evangelical teachers, and to evince, that while the former agree with the scriptures, the latter are at variance, with them. In these operations, however, offensive and defensive, Mr. Mant does not appear to us to be so successful as he pretends and as the subject both in itself, and in consequence of the notice which it has attracted, is of considerable importance, we intend after a few reflections on the spirit and pretensions of this book, to enter into a pretty copious examination of its contents.

It is not very ominous for Mr. Mant's success, that he stumbles at the threshold of his work. He represents the charge he has undertaken to refute, as originating with the evangelical teachers: whereas, before the clamour raised by the founders of Methodism, had engaged the public attention, it was a notorious fact, that the body of the clergy had, in their sermons, abandoned the doctrine of the church, and the pure principles of scripture. This was not only remarked by persons who were indifferent or inimical to the church, but was confessed by some of her best and greatest members,-by Warburton, Balguy, Paley, and others who attempted to offer some justification of the conduct of the clergy, as well as by Secker, Horne, Horseley, Porteus, and other dignitaries, who deeply lamented it, and employed their eloquence and authority to effect a reformation. Now in repeating a fact thus notorious, teachers, whether regular or sectarian, should not, one would think, appear remarkably blameable, especially when it is recollected they acted in self-defence-but it suited Mr. Mant's purpose to make the Methodists the aggressors.

-

Our lecturer affirms, in the concluding discourse of this volume, that the charge which he has attempted to refute is presumptuous, and accompanied with much misrepresentation: for, says he, the Clergy of the Church of England consists of several thousands of individuals with whose sentiments and style of preaching, otherwise than as they are to be inferred from our assent to the authorized declarations of the church, it is impossible that they who advance the charge, should be acquainted.' p. 508. Unluckily here, as in many other instances, this polemic employs a two-edged weapon. Those who make, and he who repels the charge, are in this respect upon a level. The same sources of infor mation are open to both. If the evangelical preachers cannot be acquainted with the sentiments of the clergy, neither can Mr. Mant. On his own principles, therefore, it will be a difficult task to absolve him of egregious absurdity in professing