"The dreaded Name of Demogorgon?" | perishing world, and all the more lovely And what abject nonsense he perpetrates for her tears? Must there not be some in the description of the "atom which mistake, or has Pollok's temperament, or God had made superfluously, and needed the disease which was preying on his vitals not to build creation with, but cast aside as he wrote the poem, somewhat dimmed with everlasting sense that once it was?" and distorted the features of the Bride of His peculiar power is understanding: he Heaven? Assuredly, holy ought to have ratiocinates, declaims, inveighs, but rarely been the spirit which dared to roll such feels on his half-blinded eyes flashes of withering numbers, and pass such sweepintuitive and transcendental truth. His ing verdicts down the "tide of time." is a thoroughly Scottish soul, clear even Akin to this, the poem is distinguished in its extravagances, common sense even by its tone of intellectual and spiritual in its wildness. His description of the assurance. In a kind of divine dogmaresurrection, though vivid and vigorous, tism, it more resembles Milton's great is as coarse as though done by a resurrec-work than in anything else. There is tion-man. We notice, too, the awful ho- no doubt, nor shadow of a doubt, upon liness of the spirit of this poem. There his mind; first, as to every part of his are few books in the language over whose creed; and next, as to his individual cafrontispiece the inscription is so legibly pacity for expounding the same. No grand written "Off, ye profane;" if not the Perhaps is ever uttered; the very word still more solemn motto-"Holiness to never occurs. Sawing his path through the Lord." We feel treading on ground difficulties, cutting Gordian knots, strikconsecrated by the shadow of the great ing down all opponents, without modesty Tribunal. Even Milton sometimes quits and without hesitation, he builds up his his Lebanon for Pindus, disports himself system, and clears his way. He addresses with the dreams of the Pagan mythology, himself with unfaltering confidence to and "wreaths his lithe proboscis" into greatest things. He has no momentary giant mirth at the follies of the schools. misgivings of his own fitness. He seems Young, in multitudinous tropes and glit-leaping up to meet the descending mantle tering antitheses, often trifles with his half-way. Like Milton, he is intensely tremendous themes. Sometimes, across conscious of his dignity and size. And the most solemn and spiritual pages of it is not his fault that his port is less Cowper, humour steals like a guilty thing. princely, his panoply less terrible, his Blair's piety is sincere, but hangs round preparation less severe, his afflatus less him in light and easy folds. But, with powerful, and his stature less gigantic. Pollok, there is no mirth, no trifling, and A pleasing feature of the poem is the not a particle of genuine playfulness: all vein of fine egotism which pervades it, is severe and saturnine to repulsion and and breaks out frequently in personal dismay. You are disposed to ask, Is allusions and pensive reminiscences. This this really piety, after all? Is she not a is one principal cause of its popularity. gladder, franker, milder, more amiable The poet who makes a harp of his own thing? Whether has this gloomy limner, heart, and strikes its ruddy chords with or Jeremy Taylor, Howe, Milton, and skilful fearlessness, is sure of awakening Hall, succeeded in drawing the truer like- the sympathies of the public. What so ness? Is this she whom Jesus has re-affecting in Milton as his allusions to his presented in the divine Sermon on the solitary position, "fallen on evil days and Mount, or any one of the three fair evil tongues;" or the melancholy magsisters painted by Paul: Faith, with nanimity with which he touches, as it eagle-eye, contemplating the Invisible; were, his blind orbs, and mourns over Hope, looking as beautiful and happy as their premature eclipse? What finer in if a breeze from heaven were playing Cowper, than his "Castaway," or than his around her temples, and stirring her description of the "stricken deer that golden hair; and Charity, weeping over a left the herd;" or in Burns, than his

"Vision," and his picture of himself, the ed from higher regions: he has "laboured inspired boy, in the lines,

"The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide
Amang the bearded bear;
I turn'd the clipper-weeds aside,
And spared the symbol dear."

up from beneath," and his wing wears the darkest soil of earthly passion. He "talks with the thunder as friend to friend," not because it is his most congenial companion, but because his miseries have left him no choice-the counSo in Pollok there is nothing to our tenance of man is averted from him, and minds so beautiful as his allusions to he is glad to gaze on the face of the thun"Scotia's northern battlement of hills," der-cloud; his laurels withered or torn seen from his father's house, in "morn away, he must hide his bald head with a of life," or than the brief history of him- garland of the lightning's wing. He lays self which occurs in the earlier part of his hand upon the "ocean's mane;" but the poem. It adds to the effect of such it is in despair, not familiarity. These, passages, that the plan of the poem leads however, are petty blemishes in this noble us to regard them as the reminiscences passage. As a whole, it is powerfully conof a spirit shrined in heaven, and yet, ceived, and most powerfully expressed. Its from the centre of eternal glories, look- words are winged, forked, and tempesting back with a moist eye and a full tuned: its motion is free, bold, vaulting: it heart to the experiences of its earthly is a rough, rapid, masculine, moral sketch, pilgrimage. And, to sum up the excel-done apparently at one fierce sitting. lences of the book, there are in it some Other splendid passages we might sustained and eloquent passages, which name; such as that descriptive of the were alone sufficient to buoy up the en- preparations for the Resurrection, the tire poem, were it much more cumbrous, Address to the Ocean, &c. But we unequal, and faulty, than it is. The hasten to the less gracious task of point"Byron" will occur to the mind of every ing out a few of the faults of this rereader a picture in which the artist markable book. And here a malignant seems for a season to become the subject critic might find "ample room and verge as he paints him. The poet Byron has enough." Let us touch them as tendernever himself described one of his burn-ly as we can. The book, first of all, is ing heroes better, than Pollok the soul the most unequal of all works. While which created them. How well has he some parts of it are pure poetry, others caught, especially, the self-involved and are little better than stilted and stumhaughty repulsion of his spirit, "stoop-bling prose. In aiming at the bare and ing to touch the loftiest thought," the bald simplicity of Homer, Dante, and education by which his soul was nur- Milton, its author sinks sometimes into tured into poetry, and the waste and sheer drivel. If Homer nods, Pollok howling wilderness of its ultimate mi- must snore. The work is altogether, sery. Not so well, we think, has he too, of a loose and shambling structure. given the characteristics of his genius. It is a straggling street rather than a Byron is not the ethereal being whom he solid fortress. If a poem mean a piece describes. He is not at "home where of mental masonry, firm, compact, comangels bashful look;" he is at home plete, the "Course of Time" is no poem rather where demons pale and tremble. at all. It is, in fact, a nondescript. It He is not an old acquaintance of Na- is not epic, it is not didactic. It has no ture." He has not the freedom of that story, and an exceedingly imperfect plan. city of God; it is but a city of refuge to In defect of incident, it is full of descriphim: he has been driven to it by dis- tions and moral portraitures, of all vagust and agony. A "comet" he is, reve- rieties and all merits, strung together on renced by the stars and responded to by a dusky thread called the Course of Time. the volcanoes of creation, but he is no Consequently, as a whole, it lacks inter"bird of heavenly plumage fair," descend-est. Your eye kindles, and your heart

heaves, over certain passages; but over | lyre of judgment, he strikes some brief the rest you yawn portentously. Its mo- strong notes, but recoils from the sounds ral pictures are repeated till you sicken, he himself has made; and from an atand spun out till you weary. Sometimes tempt to lift up his hand to the last they are too general to be true, and are trembling cords, he falls back exhausted always painted in a chiaro-scuro, which, and helpless. In fact, the poet reaches though true to principles, is false to fact. his climax at the sixth book. After Often he states common truths with this, he sinks down, struggling sore, but ridiculous emphasis, and heaps strong vainly, to break his fall. The last six words, like too much fuel on a little fire, books might almost have been spared. till it is utterly quenched. His imagina- The subject, like strong sunlight, presses tion has force, but little richness; his in- too heavily on his eye. He has a "vision tellect strength, but not subtlety; his lan- of his own," but it is not, on the whole, guage pith, but no melting beauty. He a happy vision. It does not fill and can command terror, but seldom tears. satisfy his own imagination, and how His genius has grasp, but no refinement. can it satisfy his reader's? Indeed, the His tone, in reference to sinners, is far theme is too majestic for pencil or for too harsh and exulting. He seems some-pen. We felt this strongly when looking times to insult and trample on their eter- at Danby's grand but glaring "Opennal sepulchre, as if the pressure of Al- ing of the Sixth Seal." Notwithstandmighty vengeance were not enough with- ing the prodigality of blazing colour, the out the makeweight of his tread. His energy of some of the figures, and the flames are fiercer than those of Dante mingled modesty and daring of the design, and Milton; and he leaves none of their we not only felt a sense of oppressive lingering touches of beauty and pathos splendour, but an overpowering sense of on the surface of the lurid lake.. Though the unfitness of the topic for any pictowriting in the nineteenth century, he has rial representation. Danby very properly, not sought to grapple with the grand it is true, ventures not to draw the feamoral aspects of punishment-never ven-tures of that face from which heaven and tured beyond the familiar images of ma- earth are fleeing away; a small quiet terial pain-never tried to paint the suc-cross alone, surrounded by the divine cessive descending stages of degradation glory, gives the meaning and moral of in a spiritual being, given up to itself, as the picture; but how feeble a simulainto the hands of a dire tormentor. This crum, even of the other features of the is a task which lies over for some pro- scene, is, after all, presented! What founder artist. He is better, too, at idea does that one wave of volcanic fire sounding the key-note than at finishing give of a world in "fiery deluge and the melody. His prefatory flourishes are without an ark?"—that flash of lightstartling, but the anthem is not always ning splitting the rocks, of the thousand worthy of the prelude. Had he ventured thunders on which the Judge shall be to describe the Flood, he would have ex- enthroned? — those scattered groups of pended his strength in the gathering of surprised men and women, of the inthe animals and the elements: his pen habitants of the whole earth arrested by had faltered in describing the unchained the crash of doom?-that city toppling, deluge the darkened sun-the torrents of the capitals of the world reeling into of rain cleaving the gloom-the varied ruin ?-that one slave lifting up his arms groups of drowning wretchedness-the to the morning of liberty which is dawnark riding in melancholy grandeur on ing, of Ethiopia stretching out her hands the topmost billow of an ocean planet. unto God? Nor, in the compass of poetry, As it is, he sweeps the stage nobly, for do we know anything, save the Dies the "great vision of the guarded" iræ, entirely worthy of the overwhelming Throne; he excites a thrill of shud- subject. Prose-pictures of it are comdering expectation; on the tremendous mon in sermons; and, when well de

livered, they may tell in the pulpit, but the sun, nor Ceres with Sirius. Place it are perfectly powerless in print. Even even in the second file of poetical masterin the pulpit, it is ridiculous enough to pieces-with the "Manfred," the "Cenci," see a well-dressed youth, in gown and the "Paradise Regained," and the "Excurbands, with elaborately-arranged hair, sion"- -we dare not, so long as Jove's and elaborately-balanced periods, and satellites are less than Jove." But let "start theatric practised at the glass," it have its praise as belonging to the setting about the destruction of the uni- order which we may call "third among verse-deliberately snuffing out its stars, the sons of light," and its place on a like tapers-applying his match to the sloping perch, at the top of which shines, pillars of the globe-springing a mine in its starry lustre, the "Night Thoughts:" under its cities, wiping away its oceans, as easily as, with cambric handkerchief, he does the sweat-drops from his ladylike brow; and closing, with a smile of supreme complacency, by quoting the words of Robert Montgomery:

Creation shudders with sublime dismay,
And, in a blazing tempest, whirls away.'

Poets, too, and poetasters, have here alike signally failed. Young flutters toward it like a bird whose strong wing has been broken. The author of Satan rushes up, at first, with screams of ambitious agony; but, in fine, subsides and falls flat as a log. Pollok, as we have seen, gives the subject the slip, shrinking back, paralysed by its sublimity. Had Byron been a believer, he might have done it in the style of his "Darkness." But not till another Milton arise can we hope to see the epic of

"Like some dark beauteous bird, whose plume

Is sparkling with a thousand eyes." Robert Pollok was himself a remarkable man. All the anecdotes we have heard of him leave the impression of a strong-minded, courageons, determined, sarcastic, earnest, and somewhat dogmatic spirit; with a thoroughly formed and fledged opinion of himself-with a hectic heat in his blood-holy contempt, rather than love, the element of his soul; and with a gay and bitter principle alternating in his mind and talk, now eliciting stormy glee, and now severe and pungent sarcasm. At college he scarcely signalised himself at all; how could he, whose thoughts were already consecrated to the "Course of Time ?" He was no great prizeman; none of those who effloresce early and die away soon-who sell the chance of immortality for a gilded book

"That day of wrath-that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away."-who leave college loaded with laurels,

Upon the whole, this poem, though it be no finished piece of art, and no impetuous sunburst of nature-though its blemishes outnumber its beauties-must yet be admitted a powerful production, full of things which the world will not willingly let die," and which, separated, possibly, from their context, and floating on the waters into which the volume itself shall have gone down, may long preserve the memory of the ambitious and resolute spirit whence they emanated. Class it with the highest productions of the human mind-with the "Iliad," the "Prometheus Vinctus," the "Lear," and the "Paradise Lost"- -we may not, as long as the moon may not be ranked with

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and are never heard of more. For this he was at once too modest and too proud. Yet, during his curriculum, he wrote those little tales, "Helen of the Glen," &c., which, though full of fine descriptive touches, are hardly equal to Arcades" and "Lycidas;" and will never, even in the deep wake of the "Course of Time," sail on to posterity. Every one has heard the fate of his first sermon in the Hallthe loud and silly laughter with which that boyish burst was received-the fierce retort which broke from his lips, and the lofty indignation with which he drew back the first feeler of his poem into the den, and sheathed, for years, the bright weapon of his imagination. Every one knows, too, the effect which the buzzing

announcement of a great forthcoming able, roused Pollok's ire, and terminated work made, in Secession circles especi- their friendship. Meanwhile the arrow ally, and all the particulars of its after of death had fixed itself deeply in his history. The despised of the Hall "awoke vitals. He resolved on many plans of one morning and found himself famous." works never to be accomplished; among He was straightway fawned on, and others, a huge review of the ancient heacrouched to, by many who had derided then world, which he wanted the learning him before. He bore ill the strictures to have executed, and which would have of honest and sincere friends. A review been the grave of his reputation. He died of the poem appeared in "Blackwood," at length, in a strange land, unknowing written by a friend of our own, which, and unknown; but the "Course of Time" though by many thought too favour- has secured his immortality as a poet.

ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D.

ALAS, now, for the glories of the Lake at all." There Southey pursued his incountry! Some score of years ago, proudly defatigable labours, under the sting of did it lift its head above the cham- that long impulse which was so characpaign of England to the south, and even teristic of him. There Wilson, De Quintoss northwards defiance from its Skid- cey, Lloyd, and Hartley Coleridge, to say daw and Saddleback towards " stately nothing of Bishop Watson, &c., were Edinborough throned on crags," and the content and proud to be Dii Minorum waving outline of the Grampian giants. Gentium. And now, where is all this Not only did it enclose, in its fine sweep, illustrious company? Coleridge is dead, peaceful lakes, valleys "flat as the floor and died far from the murmur of Grasof a temple," tarns of austere beauty, mere springs, and the rustle of the heath forces flashing amid greenest umbrage, of Helvellyn. Wilson's princely figure is or bedewing grim rocks with an everlast-seen no more among the woods of Elleray, ing baptism; mountains, carrying off and and is consigned to the sepulchre. De up, by fine gradation (as if the one grew Quincey is now a denizen of the sweet into the other while you gazed), beauty village of Lasswade. Bishop Watson has into grandeur; but it had attracted to left the plantations of Calgarth for ever. its bosom a cluster of the wisest and Lloyd is dead-a maniac. Hartley Colerarest spirits then breathing in Britain. ridge, too, is departed. And, for some Sheltering the most of them from the years, Wordsworth was left absolutely non-appreciation or contempt of the alone, Southey, first sending his mind critics of the era-an era which was before him, having at last sighed out his "neither light nor dark," but lying be- animal breath, and "returned to God twixt the gross darkness of Darwin and who gave him." Long did the world Hayley, and the broad and blood-red up- sympathise with that mysterious obscurise of Byron-they had sought a refuge ration which rested on his powers; and from the mountains and the woods, which when the trembling hand of his wife was not denied them. There stalked or drew half aside the curtain of his masat, as it suited his quaint humour, and lady, many were the tears shed; but "murmured to the running brooks a now the eclipse has passed away, and music sweeter than their own," Words- the orb with it. It were idle, and worse worth, the quiet tune of his verse not than idle, to grieve. More entirely, peryet become a harmony to which nations haps, than any man of his generation, exlistened in reverence. There Coleridge cept Wordsworth, Scott, and Goethe, had talked like an angel, and did nothing | Southey done the work allotted to his

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