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The stiffening gale bore up the growing

wave,

And wilder motion to my madness gave; Oft have I since, when thoughtful and at rest, [mind possess'd,

Believ'd some maddening power my For, in an instant, as the stern sank low, [madness know?) (How mov'd I knew not- - what can Chance that direction to my madness gave, [ing wave; And plunged me headlong in the roarSwift flew the parting ship, the fainter light [sight. Withdrew, or horror took them from my All was confus'd above, beneath, around, All sounds of terror, no distinguish'd

sound

Could reach me, now on sweeping surges tost,

And then between the rising billows lost; An undefin'd sensation stopt my breath, Disorder'd views, and threat'ning signs of death

Met in one moment, and a terror gave, I cannot paint it, to the moving grave. My thoughts were all distressing, hurried, mix'd, [fix'd: On all things fixing, not a moment Vague thoughts of instant danger brought their pain,

New hopes of safety banish'd them again. Then the swol'n billow all those hopes destroy'd,

And left me sinking in the mighty void. Weaker I grew, and grew the more dis

may'd,

Of aid all hopeless, yet in search of aid, Struggling awhile upon the wave to keep, Then languid, sinking in the yawning

deep,

So tost, so lost, so sinking in despair, I pray'd in heart an indirected prayer, And then once more I gave my eyes to view [adieu

The ship now lost, and bade the light From my chill'd frame the enfeebled spirit fled, [ing bed, Rose the tall billows round my deepenCold seiz'd my heart, thought ceas'd, and I was dead.

But the escape-whate'er they judg'd might save [wave, Their sinking friend they cast upon the Something of those my heaven-directed [charm,

arm,

Unconscious seiz'd, and held as by a The crew astern beheld me as I swam, 'And I am sav'd, O let me say I am.'"' Perhaps no passage in his Volumes could be a more sufficient specimen of Mr. Crabbe's higher poetry. The reader involuntarily labours with the "undefined sensation" of the struggling sufferer, and at the first perusal the thoughts" distressing, hurried,

mixt"-are transferred, as it were, from the narrator's mind to our own, On a first review the tale seems marked by an unnecessary degree of minute circumstantiality, the sailor appears lost in the Author, and we think we behold an artist delineating, with slow and laborious pencil, the scene, which, in reality, must have been too confused and terrific to admit of discrimination. But a third reading (and such a passage well deserves to be read thrice) will satisfy us that as the narrative of an individual whose character seems to have undergone a purifying change from this awful peril, it is given with a precise and accurate attention to the truth of nature. It must be remembered that this is not the account which the sailor may be supposed to have given at the moment of his preservation, when his whole faculties would have been overpowered by the confusion into which they had been so lately thrown; but it is a history delivered many years after the event, by one who has been habituated to dwell upon it with the deepest interest, to disentangle its complication of circumstances, and to labour to place it before the mind of his hearers with all the force and effect of truth.

4. An Essay, on the Evidence from Scripture, that the Soul, immediately after the Death of the Body, is not in a state of Sleep or Insensibility, but of Happiness or Misery; and on the Moral Uses of that Doctrine. This—(their Prize-Essay of 1818)—is printed at the request of the Church Union Society. By the Rev. R. Polwhele, Vicar of Manaccan and St. Anthony, and Curate of Kenwyn and Kea. 8vo. pp. 59. Nichols and Son.

THIS is indeed an important Essay, and merits a deliberate perusal, as it discusses, in a masterly manner, "one of the most interesting subjects that can engage the mind of man, to collect the rays of light that gleam, in a manner, through the Scriptures, and to bring them to one point of illumination."

which must be hereafter,' is not for hu"To lay open, indeed, the things man imbecility. But, if, in our access to the gates of eternity, we have not presumptuously overstepped the limits which the Scriptures of Truth have set to rational investigation, we need not,

perhaps,

perhaps, lament our labours as impertinent or fruitless.-The texts in question, though scattered through the Bible, may yet be gleaned with profitable industry; the passages, though sometimes obscure or ambiguous, may yet admit of useful illustration. And, from a familiar acquaintance with subjects in which our eternal welfare is involved, we may contemplate results the most salutary and beneficial. I am sufficiently aware, that my construction of several texts may to some appear forced or fanciful. -The supposition (which it was my task to controvert and disprove) that the soul, immediately after death, is in a state of insensibility, has been entertained by theological writers whose ingenuity we admire, and whose piety we have no right to question.-But, in my mind, it is a theory so contrary to the very nature and attributes of the Soul, that, independent on Sacred Writ, the metaphysician would scruple to adopt it; since even in sleep, when the organs of sense are shut up-when the body lies quiescent as in death, he sees the Soul still vigorous and alert, clear in its recollections, and rapid in its imaginings.' And, in my apprehension, it is a theory so adverse to the whole tenour of the word of God, that I wonder much more of its fabrication when I consider where it originated, than at the ready reception it has met with in the Christian world; since it must lend a sanction to scepticism, and (I had almost said) a sort of shelter to sin."

The following observation, which occurs in a note, is very curious:

"The modern Theory of the Materialists has been entirely overturned by reasonings from facts-from experience. See

Memoirs of Lit. and Phil. Society of Manchester'-Vol. IV. for a valuable Paper of Dr. Ferriar, proving by evidence apparently complete and indisputable, that every part of the Brain has been injured without affecting the act of Thought."

The learned Divine thus concludes a truly-excellent Essay:

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"If he that is guilty in life, be guilty in death, if he retain, without one pause of intermission, the feeling of his offences,-if he that is unjust, be unjust still, and he that is filthy, filthy still,'-the hour of his dissolution will be fearful at distance - on a nearer prospect, full of terror. And the dread of falling immediately into the hands of the living God, will damp the secret projects of the sinner, and check, in their bolder career, 'the workers of iniquity.'-In the mean time, they who act

as under the eye of an omniscient God, and who have comfort and joy in the belief, that they live in the light of His countenance'-if once they relinquish the idea of the Almighty Presence, as sustaining and enlivening the Soul, whether in the body or out of the body,' through every stage of its existence-if they begin to harbour the melancholy thought of its necessary coexistence with the corporeal frame-as the one decays, the other languishing, as the one dies, the other insensible;is it possible, if they extend their meditations to the body mouldering away, till every particle be disunited and dispersed is it possible to preclude from their apprehension the image of the Soul evaporated-extinguished?-If they yet make an effort to carry their view thus broken to the day ofJudgment;-will they not shudder at the dreary void immediately in prospect, with scarcely a gleam of light breaking in from beyond it?— and can such a feeling of inanity consist with active Piety and Hope and Resignation?-But if the Religious man be convinced, that as soon as the pangs of death are passed, he shall go thither, where, secure from sin and sorrow, he shall rejoice in the answer of a good conscience'-where, no longer embarrassed by cares, or allured by vanities, he shall enjoy perpetual serenity, and look to the Eternal Godhead more and more revealed to his contemplation, and live in the expectation of his ultimate reward-when the Soul shall reanimate the body, and the whole man shall partake of the felicities of Heaven ;-these, doubtless, are reflections, that must operate most powerfully on the moral character-meditations calculated to correct our follies, to purify the heart from sin, to strengthen our weakness, and to subdue our passions; to repress the triumphs of fancy amidst all the affluence of worldly pleasures, and in adversity to dispel the gloom of despondence-to shed a lustre over life, and even to smooth the pillow of death. Though, therefore, our outward man perish; yet the inward man shall be renewed day by day.' And though the world passeth away, and the lusts thereof;' nevertheless we, according to the promise of God, look for new Heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.''

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and his "Tales from Shakspeare," with very considerable interest (third edit. 1816), in two volumes, as well as his "Specimens of English Poets," who lived in the time of Shakspeare.

We were naturally gratified on seeing announced some time since in the public prints, "The Works of Charles Lamb." We counted on having some good feelings and agreeable recolfections awakened; and we have not been disappointed. The Writer tells us, in a Dedication to Mr. Coleridge, "That when he wrote John Woodville' (a tragedy, contained in the first volume), he never proposed to himself any distinct deviation from common English; that he had been newly initiated in the writings of our elder Dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, they being then a first-love; and that, from what he was so freshly conversant in, it was no wonder if his language imperceptibly took a tinge."

This tinge is occasionally found in Mr. Lamb's other poems, as well as in his Tragedy; and different readers may form different opinions of them, in some measure, according to their different opinions of the style and manner of some of our more early

writers.

These two volumes contain various performances of Mr. Lamb, both in verse and prose, several of which, though we believe not all, have appeared already before the publick in different forms. His "Recollections on Christ's Hospital," it occurs to us, were printed some time back in our Miscellany; and it would be difficult to bestow on them too much praise; though we apprehend, as we did at the time, that their full beauties can be entered into by no readers but such as have been educated in that most excellent Institution.

But first as to our Author's poetry: and here we perceive we must be cautious of handling Charles Lamb, in our critical capacity, seeing he will be liable to slip through our fingers. His "John Woodville" is professedly a tragedy; his "Mr. H." a farce; and his" Witch" he calls a dramatic sketch of the seventeenth century. And here, were we disposed to criticize, we should know how to proceed; at least how we ought to proceed. But, besides these, there are many poetical sketches in his works, in which, See them in vol. LXXXIII. i. 532, 617. GENT, MAG. July, 1819.

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though the Author appears somewhat propriâ personâ, yet he evidently often gives us a touch of the dramatic. Of this description are "Hypocondraicus, a Vision of Repentance;" and, we suspect, some others. They are well done, in their way; that is to say, they are poetical, and we are pleased; but we need not be (we suspect) extravagant in our sympathies; our real sympathies may be reserved for the proper occasions.

His "Farewell to Tobacco" is a sort of mixt poem. We are inclined to think, judging at least from the cast of this poem, that we here discover something of the real Charles Lamb, struggling with strong passion, with love and hate of tobacco; though we suspect that here also is much that is purely dramatic. But whether Mr. Lamb is really speaking in his own, or a borrowed character, his more particular friends," his blest Tobacco boys," best know. Speaking in our own humble capacity, more critico, we must say, that this little fancy work possesses great merit, being replete with whim, wit, and naiveté, of political and classical pictures, and that Mr. Charles Lamb is thereby entitled to all his poetica_licentia, together with a dispensation (so far as he may be personally introduced into this Poem, to smoke aslong as he pleases, or to leave off smoking as soon as he pleases.

Allowing Mr. L. his full liberty to dramatize, and laughing with him in the proper places, we are prepared also to be serious with him, and to give our real sympathies where they are justly due; for we find in his poetical pieces much moral feeling, and should judge him to be a kindhearted, gentle creature, of which his name may be a true emblem. (See his "Sonnet on the Family Name.") The paternal and social feelings we should suppose him to possess in a high degree, from his "Address to Charles Lloyd; to T. L. H. a child; to Martin Cha. Burney, Esq.; to his Brother; and the three friends."

In a closing Sonnet, we are reminded of poor human Nature; but the Sonnet itself is a very pleasing one:SONNET XI.

"We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, [ween, The youngest, and the loveliest far, I

And

And INNOCENCE her name. The time has been,

We two did love each other's company; Time was, we two had wept to have been apart.

But when by show of seeming good beguil'd,

I left the garb and manners of a child, And my first love for man's society, Defiling with the world my virgin heartMy lov'd companion dropp'd a tear, and fled,

And hid in deepest shades her awful head. Belov'd, who shall tell me where thou art

In what delicious Eden to be foundThat I may seek thee the wide world around?"

Thus far with respect to Mr. Lamb's poetical compositions; all of which, if we do not much admire, we admire most very much. His Prose Essays embrace the following topics: On the Tragedies of Shakspeare, considered with reference to their fitness for stage representation; Characters of Dramatic Writers contemporary with Shakspeare; Specimens from the Writings of Fuller the Church Historian; on the Genius and Cha racter of Hogarth; on the Poetical Works of Geo. Wither; with several other pieces.

It is the aim of the Essay on Shaks. peare's Tragedies to show, that the practice of stage representation reduces every thing to a controversy of elocution; and that some of the best things must be sullied and turned from their very nature, by being exposed to a large audience. He could not have chosen better characters for the purpose of illustrating his ideas on this subject than those of Hamlet and Lear. We shall let Mr. Lamb speak for himself:

"The character of Hamlet is, perhaps, that by which, since the days of Betterton, a succession of popular performers have had the greatest ambition to distinguish themselves. The length of the part may be one of their reasons. But for the character itself, we find it in a play, and therefore we judge it a fit subject of dramatic representation. The play itself abounds in maxims and reflexions beyond any other, and therefore we consider it as a proper vehicle for conveying moral instruction. Hamlet himself-what does he suffer meanwhile, by being dragged forth as the public schoolmaster, to give lectures to the crowd? Why, nine parts in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions between bimself and his moral sense;

But

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they are the effusions of his solitary musings, which he retires to holes and corners and the most sequestered parts of the palace to pour forth; or rather, they are the silent meditations with which his bosom is bursting, reduced to words for the sake of the reader, who must else remain ignorant of what is passing there. These profound sorrows, these light-and-noise-abhorring ruminations, which the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls and chambers, how can they be represented by a gesticulating actor, who comes and mouths them out before an audience, making four hundred people his confidants at once. I say not that it is the fault of the actor so to do; he must pronounce them ore rotundo, he must accompany them with his eye, he must insinuate them into his auditory by some trick of eye, tone, or gesture, or he fails. must be thinking all the while of his appearance, because he knows that all the while the spectators are judging of it. And this is the way to represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet."

He

We should, however, here take along with us that Mr. Lamb is not arguing that Hamlet or Lear should not be acted, but to show how much they are made other things by being acted; and the following remark, though boldly advanced, appears to be strictly just:

to me not at all to differ from that which

"I mean no disrespect to any actor; but the sort of pleasure which Shakspeare's plays give in the acting, seems the audience receive from those of any other writers; and they being in themothers, I must conclude there is someselves so essentially different from all thing in the nature of acting which levels all distinctions."

The vulgar stuff that has been foisted into Shakspeare's plays to render them "acting plays," is justly reprobated by Mr. Lamb.

Our Author's former publications reuder him peculiarly fitted for his present undertaking, and he has executed it in no common way; for the next Essay, therefore, on the Characters of Dramatic Writers contemporary with Shakspeare, we shall let him speak for himself:

"When I selected for publication, in 1808, Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, who lived about the time of Shakspeare, the kind of extracts which I was anxious to give were not so much passages of wit and humour, though the old plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of the deepest qua

1

H

lity, interesting situations, serious descriptions, that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic rather than to comic poetry. The plays which I made choice of were, with few exceptions, such as treat of human life and manners, rather than masques and Arcadian pastorals, with their train of abstractions, unimpassioned deities, passionate mortals-Claius, and Medorus, and Amintas, and Amarillis. My leading design was, to illustrate what may be called the moral sense of our ancestors. To show in what manner they felt, when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in trying circumstances, in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the strife of contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how their griefs were tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated; how much of Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how far in his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all, mankind. I was also desirous to bring together some of the most admired scenes of Fletcher and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic poets of that age entitled to be considered after Shakspeare, and, by exhibiting them in the same volume with the more impressive scenes of old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Webster, Ford, and others, to show what we had slighted, while beyond all proportion we had been crying up one or two favourite names. From the desultory criticisms which accompanied the publication, I have selected a few which I thought would best stand by themselves, as requiring least immediate reference to the play or passage by which they were suggested."

(To be continued.)

6. Views of Society and Manners in the North of Ireland, in a Series of Letters, written in the year 1818. By John Gamble, Esq.Author of “Irish Sketches," ་་ Sarsfield," "Northern Irish Tales," &c. 8vo. Longman and Co.

IN the present age of Tours and Journeys, when the liberation of the Continent has opened so wild a field for investigation, Ireland seems to be sinking into provincial obscurity, and is likely to be more than ever neglected. But its claims to notice, though superseded for a time by those of more distant countries, which have the attraction of novelty to recommend them, are not intrinsically diminished, and can never be regarded with indifference. These claims coutinue to be deeply felt, but they are

of such a nature that the acknowledgment of them is no gratifying duty; indeed the very mention of Ireland conjures up a host of painful. recollections and forebodings, from which the mind, rather than combat them, would willingly escape, seeking refuge from the trouble of devising a present remedy, in the passive hope that future events may, somehow or other, avert the threatened evil. Thus, to vary the similitude, that once distracted country appears on our political horizon like a slumbering volcano, which, at any moment, in a season of seeming tranquillity, may again vomit forth its devastating fires. Impressed with an apprehension that some terrible explosion is preparing, we stand aloof, in still but unquiet apprehension, half ashamed of our inertness, and ready to applaud the first adventurous spirit who shall explore the penetralia of the dreaded region, and bring back truth either to confirm or dispel our fears, and at all events to relieve us from suspense. Nor were there wanting men of suffi cient nerve to accomplish that desirable aim, if firmness and perseverance were the only requisites; but Ireland is not a country to be explored by a mere stranger; and he who, on making the attempt, had to depend only on the common and obvious means of information, would return, very little the wiser from his expedition. It is only by a native that such a country can be worthily described, and that native must divest himself of many cherished and deep-rooted partialities, before he ventures upon the task.

To the credit of possessing these qualifications, the present writer, if we may judge from his own avowal, which is corroborated by circumstantial evidence, has a fair and just title. Ireland is his birth place, and the abode of his youth; but he has passed a season of his maturer years in other countries, and has thus enabled himself to appreciate her condition, by comparing it with theirs. He returns, with his amor patriæ undiminished, though regulated by a wider survey of the world; he reviews the scenes of his early days with the calm eye of experience, and he observes changes which (setting aside all the sanguine anticipations of juvenile enthusiasm) indicate retrogradation rather than improvement, and mourn

fully

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