of what is called GLORY. War he reprobates, and vice he deplores. Of his country he speaks with a patriotic enthu siasm, and he exhorts to virtue with a Christian's ardor. He tells, as he says,

Most bitter truth without bitterness;"

and though, as we learn from his own confession, he has been deemed the enemy of his country, yet, if we may judge from these specimens, no one can be more desirous of promoting all that is important to its security and felicity.

He begins, in the first poem, Fears in Solitude, with describing his rural retreat, suited by its stillness and beauty to the contemplative state of his mind: but scarcely has he indulged himself with the view of the pleasures which it yields, than his heart is painfully affected by a recollection of the horrid changes which the march of armies, and the conflicts of war, would introduce on his silent hills.' His fears realize an invasion to his imagination; and were the horrors of war brought into our island, he owns that it would be no more than our crimes deserve :

We have offended, O my countrymen!

We have offended very grievously,

And have been tyrannous. From east to west

A groan of accusation pierces heaven!
The wretched plead against us, multitudes
Countless and vehement, the sons of God,
Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on,
Steam'd up from Cairo's swamps of pestilence,
Ev'n so, my countrymen! have we
gone forth
And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
With slow perdition murders the whole man,
His body and his soul! Meanwhile, at home,
We have been drinking with a riotous thirst
Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth,
A selfish, lewd, effeminated race,
Contemptuous of all honourable rule,

Yet bartering freedom, and the poor man's life,
For gold, as at a market! The sweet words
Of christian promise, words that even yet

Might stem destruction, were they wisely preach'd,
Are mutter'd o'er by men, whose tones proclaim
How flat and wearisome they feel their trade.
Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent,

To deem them falsehoods, or to know their truth,
O blasphemous! the book of life is made.
A superstitious instrument, on which
We gabble o'er the oaths we mean to break,
For all must swear-all, and in every place,
College and wharf, council and justice-court,

All

All, all must swear, the briber and the brib'd,
Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
The rich, the poor, the old man, and the young,
All, all make up one scheme of perjury,

That faith doth reel; the very name of God
Sounds like a juggler's charm; and bold with joy,
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight) the owlet ATHEISM,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
And, hooting at the glorious sun in heaven,
Cries out, "where is it ?"

Thankless too for peace,
(Peace long preserv'd by fleets and perilous seas)
Secure from actual warfare, we have lov'd
To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
Alas! for ages ignorant of all

It's ghastlier workings (famine or blue plague,
Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows)
We, this whole people, have been clamorous.
For war and bloodshed, animating sports,
The which we pay for, as a thing to talk of,
Spectators and not combatants! no guess
Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,
No speculation on contingency,

However dim and vague, too vague and dim
To yield a justifying cause: and forth
(Stuff'd out with big preamble, holy names,
And adjurations of the God in heaven)
We send our mandates for the certain death
Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,
And women that would groan to see a child
Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war,
The best amusement for our morning meal!
The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers
From curses, who knows scarcely words enough
To ask a blessing of his heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute
And technical in victories and defeats,
And all our dainty terms for fratricide,

Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues
Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which
We join no feeling and attach no form,
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this godlike frame
Were gor'd without a pang; as if the wretch,
Who fell in battle doing bloody deeds,
Pass'd off to heaven, translated and not kill'd;
As tho' he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him!-Therefore evil days.
Are coming on us, O my countrymen !

And

And what if all-avenging Providence,

Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words, force us to feel
The desolation and the agony

Of our fierce doings?—'

There is so much truth, with so much serious, pointed, and suitable exhortation, in these lines, that we feel it a duty, more for the sake of the public than of the author, to solicit their perusal.

Mr. C.'s invocation to the Great Ruler of Empires to spare this guilty country, and his address to his countrymen to return to virtue and to unite in repelling an impious invading foe, are equally excellent. His description of the French is such as must animate Britons, were the enemy to attempt an invasion of us, to unite as one man in accomplishing what the poet requires:

Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,

That laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
With deeds of murder; and still promising
Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
Poison life's amities, and cheat the heart
Of Faith and quiet Hope, and all that soothes
And all that lifts the spirit! Stand we forth;
Render them back upon th' insulted ocean,
And let them toss as idly on it's waves

As the vile sea-weeds, which some mountain blast
Swept from our shores! And O! may we return
Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,
Repenting of the wrongs, with which we stung
So fierce a foe to frenzy!'

From bodings of misery to his country, he returns to the brighter prospects of hope. While, with the spirit of the Christian muse, he indulges,

'Love and the thoughts that yearn for human kind, he expresses a peculiar attachment to his native soil:

There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrow'd from my country! O divine
And beauteous island, thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me !'

In the Ode entitled France,' the author, like a true Arcadian shepherd, adores

The spirit of divinest liberty;'

and he in course professes how much he wished, at the commencement of the revolution, [without bloodshed,] that France might break her fetters and obtain freedom;-how he hung his head

and

and wept at our interference ;-and how, amid all the horrors
and atrocities attending the revolution, he cherished the hope
that these black clouds, which darkened the horizon of French
liberty, would disperse, and that France would be happy in
herself and just to surrounding states. These hopes he
How considers as vain. He invokes Freedom to forgive these
idle dreams,' and particularly reprobates France for her conduct
to Switzerland.

O France! that mockest heav'n, adult'rous, blind,
And patriot only in pernicious toils!

Are these thy boasts, champion of human kind:
To mix with kings in the low lust of sway,
Yell in the hunt, and share the murd❜rous prey:
T' insult the shrine of liberty with spoils

From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray!'

A beautiful address to Liberty constitutes the last stanza.

Frost at Midnight' is a pleasing picture of virtue and content in a cottage. The author's cradled babe seems to have inspired him, and here he dedicates his infant to solitude and religious contemplation.

Much as we admire the poetic spirit of this bard, we are forced to censure some of his lines as very prosaic. In his choice of words, also, he is not always sufficiently nice. The last line

As thou would'st fly for very eagerness,'

is extremely flat, and gives the idea of an exhausted muse; Small poems, like those before us, should be highly finished. Neither coarseness not negligence should be seen in cabinet pictures.

Art. VI. A Key to the classical Pronunciation of Greek and Latin
Proper Names, in which the Words are accented and divided into
Syllables exactly as they ought to be pronounced; with References
to Rules, which show the Analogy of Pronunciation. To which
is added, a complete Vocabulary of Scripture Proper Names, di-
vided into Syllables, and accented according to Rules drawn from
Analogy and the best Usage. Concluding with Observations on
the Greek and Latin Accent and Quantity, with some probable
Conjectures on the Method of freeing them from the Obscurity
and Confusion in which they are involved, both by the Ancients
and Moderns. By John Walker, Author of the Critical Pro-
nouncing Dictionary, &c. &c. 8vo. pp. 166. 5s. Boards. Ro-
binsons. 1798.

MR.
R. Walker is advantageously known both as a teacher of
elocution and as an author on that subject. In the co-
pious title-page prefixed to the present performance, the read-
er's atterition will be attracted by a variety of topics of a

delicate

Moo-y.

4

delicate and doubtful nature, which have been often discussed, but never satisfactorily decided. In questions of accent or prosody, an appeal must be made, not to reason only, but to sentiment also; and, as the feelings of mankind have different degrees of acuteness, distinctions will be made by the ear of one person which are altogether imperceptible to that of another. In reading Greek and Latin, it is acknowleged that the English follow the genius of their own pronunciation, and therefore continually violate the quantity of the antient languages, more than any other nation in Europe. When the penultimate is accented, its vowel, though followed by a single consonant, is always long. Before two consonants, no vowel sound is ever made long, except that of the diphthong au. These and innumerable other solecisms in our pronunciation have produced different proposals for altering our present system; and, in reading the learned languages, for adopting a foreign, and particularly the Italian model. Mr. Walker's objections to this measure are worthy of attention.

In answer to this plea for alteration, it may be observed; that if this mode of pronouncing Latin be that of foreign nations, and were really so superior to our own, we certainly must perceive it in the pronunciation of foreigners, when we visit them, or they us: but I think I may appeal to the experience of every one who has had an opportunity of making the experiment; that so far from a superiority on the side of the foreign pronunciation, it seems much inferior to our own. I am aware of the power of habit, and of its being able to make the worse appear the better reason" on many occasions; but if the harmony of the Latin language depended so much on a preservation of the quantity as many pretend, this harmony would surely overcome the bias we have to our own pronunciation; especially if our own were really so destructive of harmony as it is said to be. Till, therefore, we have a more accurate idea of the nature of quantity, and of that beauty and harmony of which it is said to be the efficient in the pronunciation of Latin, we ought to preserve a pronunciation which has naturally sprung up, in our own soil, and is congenial to our native language. Besides, an alteration of this kind would be attended with so much dispute and uncertainty as must make it highly impolitic to attempt it.

The analogy, then, of our own language being the rule for pronouncing the learned languages, we shall have little occasion for any other directions for the pronunciation of the Greck and Latin proper names, than such as are given for the pronunciation of English words. The general rules are followed almost without exception. The first and most obvious powers of the letters are adopted, and there is scarcely any difficulty but in the position of the accent; and as this depends so much on the quantity of the vowels, we need only inspect a dictionary to find the quantity of the penultimate vowel, and this determines the accent of all the Latin words; and it may be added

of