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much of the force of that attachment which binds man to his native soil, and engenders the feelings of patriotism, and of veneration for the scenes of celebrated actions, and the abodes of the luminaries of past ages.

"Hence, homefelt pleasure prompts the patriot's sigh; This makes him wish to live, and dare to die.

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And hence the charm historic scenes impart,

Hence Tiber awes, and Avon melts the heart.
Aërial forms, in Tempé's classic vale

Glance through the gloom, and whisper in the gale.
In wild Vaucluse with love and Laura dwell,
And watch and weep in Eloisa's cell."

He then adverts to the power of memory in the inferior animals,-instanced in the horse, the dog, the carrier-pigeon, and the bee. In relation to the carrierpigeon, he introduces, with great beauty and feeling, an incident which took place at the siege of Haarlem in the sixteenth century. When the inhabitants of that city, worn out by hardships and famine, besought the governor to surrender to a merciless enemy, he was encouraged to persevere in the defence, by the opportune arrival of a carrier pigeon with intelligence that relief was approaching.

"Sweet bird! thy truth shall Haarlem's walls attest, And unborn ages consecrate thy nest.

When with the silent energy of grief,

With looks that asked, yet dared not hope relief,

Want with her babes round generous valour clung,
To wring the slow surrender from his tongue,
"Twas thine to animate her closing eye;

Alas! 'twas thine perchance the first to die,

Crush'd by her meager hand when welcomed from the sky."

In the second part of the poem, its author selects more abstract and more elevated themes, and takes a higher flight. He had as yet only exhibited memory as subservient to sensation; he now shows her lending her aid to the acquirement of knowledge. He then descants on the consolations of memory to the afflicted and forsaken; and introduces her as in active operation when sleep has suspended the other faculties from their proper influence; and shows that, even in a state of madness, remembrance of the beloved past can administer consolation.

That a state of retirement is the most favourable condition for enjoying the sweets of recollection, he illustrates by a beautiful tale, which is perhaps the most read, because the most pleasing to the fancy as well as touching to the heart, of any passage in the work. The young and beautiful Julia, the beloved of the faithful and devoted Florio, is accidentally drowned :

"Her father strew'd his white hairs in the wind,
Call'd on his child,-nor linger'd long behind;
And Florio lived to see the willow wave,
With many an evening whisper, o'er their grave.
Yes, Florio lived, and, still of each possess'd,
The father cherish'd and the maid caress'd:

The poet now takes, at the conclusion of the poem, a still higher flight, and sings of a more exalted species of memory, which he supposes to be possessed by the angelic orders.

"But is her magic only felt below?

Say through what brighter realms she bids it flow,-
To what pure beings, in a nobler sphere,

She yields delight but faintly imaged here?"

The apostrophe of the poet to his deceased brother, near the close of the work, is one of the noblest and most affecting effusions of the kind, to be found in poetry. Its language is true to nature, to feeling, to morality, to religion, and worthy of the heavenly theme on which it is employed.

The prominent blemishes of this poem are its langour and effeminacy of thought and expression, and the very perceptible slowness of the movement of its metre. The following passage, by no means the feeblest in the poem, will exemplify these blemishes; and yet it is a passage against which no direct violation of the rules of composition, in either the sense or diction, can be alleged :

"As o'er the dusky furniture I bend,

Each chair awakes the feelings of a friend.
The storied arras, source of fond delight,

With old achievements charms the wilder'd sight;
And still with heraldry's rich hues imprest,
On the dim window glows the pictured crest.
The screen unfolds its many-colour'd chart;
The clock still points its moral to the heart;

That faithful monitor, 'twas heaven to hear,
When soft it spoke a promised pleasure near;
And has its sober hand, its simple chime,

Forgot to trace the feather'd feet of time?

That massive beam, with curious carving wrought,
Whence the caged linnet soothed my pensive thought;
Those muskets, cased with venerable rust;

Those once-loved forms still breathing through their dust,
Still from their frame, in mould gigantic cast,
Starting to life-all whisper of the past."

To many readers of English rhyme, triplets are always unpleasant; and there are few of the admirers of Rogers but will admit, that the excellence of this poem would have suffered nothing, had he introduced them into it less frequently. It may seem hypercritical to point out the two following false rhymes, as defects worthy of attention. In any poem but one which lays claim to the highest excellence in the formation of its verses, and which would have been absolutely perfect in this respect, if labour and care could have accomplished perfection, it would savour of petulance to notice errors so trivial. But in a work of such high repute for exquisite finish, such defects furnish a bad example, against which it is desirable to guard the tyro in poetical composition.

"Turns on the neighbouring hill once more to see The dear abode of peace and privacy."

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"And win each wavering purpose to relent With warmth so mild, so gently violent."

Every reader will see the objection to these rhymes; and it is scarcely necessary to observe that English rhyme does not allow the consonants which commence the rhyming syllables, to be either the same, or of similar sounds. As well might a poet venture to rhyme man with man, or book with book, as the syllables above italicized.

But the poem must indeed be well written, in the composition of which, no greater defects than are here noticed, can be discovered; and he must be a fastidious reader who would permit such slight imperfections to arrest his attention from the innumerable beauties of both thought and expression with which the work before us abounds.

On the whole, "The Pleasures of Memory," although not so animated and impressive as some other of the poems of "The Pleasures," is a production worthy of companionship with the best of them; and the verdict of the world has been so long and so decisively given in its favour, that it would be equally vain and presumptuous to question its claims to a distinguished place among the didactic poems of England.

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