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COUNT JULIAN: a Tragedy. mittance to Julian in the disguise of London, Murray. 1812. Svo.

pp. 128.

a herald; but the Count, still inflexible, refuses his consent to the King's union with his daughter, and

The Tragedy is prefaced with they part in enmity. Egilona and these remarks:

The daughter of Count Julian is usually called Florinda-a fictitious appellation, unsuitable to the person and to the period. Never was one devised more incompatible with the appearance of truth, or more fatal to the illusions of sympathy. The city of Covilla, it is reported, was named after her. Here is no improbability: there would be a gross one in deriving the word, as is also pretended, from La Cava. Cities, in adopting a name, bear it usually as a testimony of victories, or as an augury of virtues. Small and obscure places, occasionally, receive what their neighbours throw against them; as Puerto de la mala muger in Murcia. A generous and enthusiastic people, beyond all others in existence or on record, would affix no stigma to innocence and misfortune.

It is remarkable that the most important era in Spanish history should be the most obscure. This is propitious to the poet, and above all to the tragedian. Few characters of such an era can be glaringly misrepresented, few facts offensively perverted.

Its subject may be stated briefly thus:

Roderigo, king of Spain, having been disappointed in the hope of issue by his wife Egilona, pays his addresses to Covilla, the daughter of Count Julian, who had been betrothed to Sisabert. Count Julian revolts, alleging the tyranny and injustice of the king in vindication of his conduct, aud joins the army of the Moors against his sovereign. The tragedy opens with several scenes that show the uneasiness of Julian, and the mutual distrust subsisting between himself and his allies. Roderigo obtains ad

Covilla also procure access to Julian in the hostile camp; and the former, suspecting a collusion between her husband and the Count, for the purpose of raising Covilla to the throne, offers her hand to Abdalazis, the son of Muza, and one of the Moorish chiefs. She remains with the enemy; and Roderigo being afterwards taken prisoner, a bitter dialogue ensues between himself and Julian, which ends in the remorse of the King. The Count releases him, and we are told that he abjures his crown at the shrine of the Virgin Mary, leaving the nation free to elect a king. Covilla quitting the camp about the same time, Egilona's suspicions are confirmed; and she inflames the resentment of the Moorish leaders. In the debate which takes place between these personages and Julian, Muza, the most perfidious and vindictive of them, imparts to the afflicted father the death of his two sons, whose end had been treacherously accelerated by his order, and the Count learns also, from a messenger, the disastrous fate of his wife, who had expired of grief by the corpse of her youngest son. At the conclusion of the piece, Julian goes off with the guards, who are supposed to attend him to execution, and predicts the triumph of his country in future ages.

We cannot offer a better illustration of the author's powers, than by the transcription of some part of the dialogue, and a few of the sentiments incidentally delivered by the characters.

Opas, the Metropolitan of Seville,

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This disingenuous soul debasing passion, Rising from abject and most sordid fear, Stings her own breast with bitter selfreproof,

[dies. Consumes the vitals, pines, and never Love, Honor, Justice, numberless the formis, [sumies;

Glorious and high the stature, she asBut watch the wandering changeful mischief well,

And thou shalt see her with low lurid light Search where the soul's most valued treasure lies,

Or, more embodied to our vision, stand
With evil eye, and sorcery hers alone,
Looking away her helpless progeny,
Aud drawing poison from its very smiles.
pp. 63-4.

Count Julian observes, on the subject of prayer from the sectaries of different creeds,

Precions or vile, how dare we seize thatoffering,

cense

Scatter it, spurn it, in its way to heaven, Because we know it not? the sovran lord Accepts his tribute, myrrh and frankin[prayer: From some, from others penitence and Why intercept them from his gracions hand? [supplicant? Why dash them down? why smite the p. 88.

With respect to posthumous fame, he replies to Muza,

Justice, who came not up to us thro' life, Loves to survey our likeness on our tombs, When rivalry, malevolence, and wrath, And every passion that once stormed around,

Is calm alike without them as within. Our very chains make the whole world our own,

Bind those to us who else had past us by, Those at whose call brought down to us, the light

Of future ages lives upon our name.

Part of the scene between Roderigo and Julian, after the captivity of the former, may afford a clearer view of the author's general style:

Jul. To stop perhaps at any wickedness Appears a merit now, and at the time, Prudence or policy it often is

Which afterward seems magnanimity. The people had deserted thee, and thronged

My standard, had I rais'd it, at the first; But once subsiding, and no voice of mine Calling by name cach grievance to each

man,

They, silent and submissive by degrees, Bore thy hard yoke, and, hadst thou but opprest, [deceived;

Would still have borne it: thou hast now Thou hast done all a foren foe could do, And more, against them; with ingratitude Not hell itself could arm the foren foe'Tis forged at home, and kills not from afar.

Amid whate'er vain glories fell upon Thy rainbow span of power, which I dissolve, [and rank, Boast not how thou conferredst wealth How thou preservedst me, my family, All my distinctions, all my offices, When Witiza was murder'd, that I stand Count Julian at this hour by special [Ceuta,

grace.

The sword of Julian saved the walls of And not the shadow that attends his name:

It was no badge, no title, that o'erthrew Soldier, and steed, and engine-don Rode rigo,

The truly and the falsely great here differ;. These by dull wealth or during fraud ad

cance,

Him the Almighty calls amidst his people
To sway the wills and passions of markind.
The weak of heart and intellect beheld
Thy splendour, and adored thee lord of
Spain---
[more.
I rose- Roderigo lords o'er Spain no
Rod. Now to a traitor's add a boaster's
[believe
Jul. Shameless and arrogant, dost thou
I boast for pride or pastime? forced to
boast,
[cost thee.
Truth costs me more than falsehood e'er
Divested of that purple of the soul,
That potency, that palm of wise ambi-

name.

tion

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EVENING AMUSEMENTS, or the Beauty of the Heavens displayed, in which several striking appear – ances to be observed on various Evenings in the Heavens during the Year 1813, are described. By W. FREND, Esq. M. A. London, Mawman, Pr. 38.

This is the continuation of a work annually published since the year 1804, with a view to instruct young persons in astronomy by a description of the paths of the moon and planets, and of the positions of the stars, for certain evenings in each month. To the account of each month is prefixed a short essay on some subject in astronomy, and in this year's volume the nature of attraction is investigated and denied; and to use the author's words, it is by him banished "from the regions of astronomy." In examining this subject the doctrine of centripetal forces as laid down by Sir Isaac Newton is tried in the case of horses running round a ring, the stone in a sling, a cork in a mill-pond, and gold leaf moved to and from the conductor of an electrical machine. Attraction is examined in the case of a wet newspaper before the fire, of thread adhering to sealing wax after it has been rubbed, of a leather soaked in water to a stone. The opinion of Boscovich is then brought to view on the alternate

powers of repulsion and attraction supposed to be inherent in every particle of matter, and of course the existence of such powers is denied. Sir Isaac Newton's work on the principles of natural philosophy is now brought into view, and though great credit is allowed to the mathematical part, its application to natural philosophy is not admitted, and a comparison is made between Newton aud Milton, on their powers of imagination.

"Newton, according to our author, was not inferior to Milton in imagination, but they employed it on different objects. Grant to Milton his embodied spirits, his empyrean heaven, his angelic warfare, and his heroes act as consistently as those of Homer in the siege of Troy. Grant to Newton the influence that certain particles are to have on each other, then his combinations of them will be valid, his system is complete. His ingenuity remains the same, whether any thing in nature corresponds with it or not. Milton's devils and Newton's particles, perform the task assigned to them by these great masters of the drama; and we who are admitted to be spectators of the scenes cannot too much admire the skill of the artists."

The reasoning of Sir Isaac Newton in two of his works, ins Universal Arithmetic and Principles of Natural Philosophy, is brought into question, and his definition of numbers being some greater and some less than nothing, leads to a humorous instance of a conclusion derived from it, by which a traveller is made to rest a day on his journey, and this is called going two miles farther than he did the day before. This gives the author an opportunity of introducing his friend Baron Maseres as a strenuous opposer of this doctrine of Sir Isaac Newton. The first lemma of

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The author disclaims the idea of attempting to overthrow the mathematics of Sir Isaac, of which he entertains a high opinion, but he apprehends that the application of them may be judged by numbers who have not skill or leisure to read the Principia. Upon such persous he calls to examine the supposed power of attraction in the familiar instance of the solution of a lump of sugar in water, and he compares the answer of the chymist that it is effected by attraction to the Hindoo support of the earth by an elephant and a tortoise. From the sugar not being attracted by ice, he infers that in its state of water and steam the effect which is manifest to our senses, is produced by a cause which in a future age will be as well known as that of the mercury in the barometer. To this cause he attributes the adherence of metals in a certain temperature after they have been once in fusion, but the impossibility of bringing the part to adhere when they are once separated by a fracture, though the greatest possible pressure should be applied. But allowing even the possibility of attraction in the minute particles of matter, the author will not allow its efficacy to extend some hundred thousand miles beyond them, and this brings him to compare together the celebrated law of Kepler, respecting the periodical times and mean distances of the planets from the sun with Sir Isaac Newton's no

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less famous law of the inverse square of the distances, which laws the author denies to be compatible with each other, and he concludes that neither of them is true. The attempt, he says 66 I to describe the path of the heavenly bodies is one of noble daring, nor was it less to assign the cause of their motions: but can we imagine that the unerring hand of omnipotence is to be thus guided by our arithmetic, by laws of human calculation."

TALES in VERSE by the REV. G. CRABBE, LL. B. Oct. bds. 128. pp. 398. London, Hatchard. 1812.

THESE Tales are dedicated to the Duchess Dowager of Rutland. The author modestly hints in his preface as follows;

There has been recommended to me, and from authority which neither inclination nor prudence leads me to resist, in any new work I might undertake, an unity of subject, and that arrangement of my materials which connects the whole and gives additional interest to every part; in fact, if not an Epic Poem, strictly so denominated, yet such composition as would possess a regular succession of events, and a catastrophe to which every incident should be subservient, and which every character, in a greater or less degree, should conspire to accom

plish.

In a Poem of this nature, the principal and inferior characters in some degree resemble a General and his army, where no one pursues his peculiar objects and adventures, or pursues them in unison with the movements and grand purposes of the whole body; where, there is a com

Author of a Poem intitled, The Borough' Oct. also two Vols. of 'Poems, 6th Ed,

munity of interests and a subordination of actors: and it was upon this view of the subject, and of the necessity for such distribution of persons and events, that I found myself obliged to relinquish an undertaking, for which the characters I could command, and the adventures I could describe, were altogether unfitted. pp. xi. xii.

Authors certainly may be allowed to know in what kind of writing they are most likely to succeedquid ferre recusent, quid valeant humeri;' and we must conceive that an Epic Poem is not a task suited to all geniuses. They who resort to poetry, as to a pleasing sorcery which can charm pain and anguish for awhile, who fly to it as a refuge from the sad realities of life, will desert Mr. Crabbe for more interesting and amusing companions. All who prefer the accuracy of a Chinese painter to the grace of a Reynolds, or the glowing conception of a Fuseli, will find the portraits of Mr. Crabbe sufficiently accurate.

The following lines are part of the character of Justice Bolt;

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In accuracy of description, and fidelity of coloring, Mr. Crabbe has certainly never since equalled his lines on A Parish-Workhouse, with which we remember to have amused ourselves twenty years ago.

In the tale of the Brothers, the character of a frank open-hearted British seaman is contrasted with the cold and calculating spirit of his brother the mechanic. The sailor is described, in the following lines, as dying of a broken heart from the ingratitude he had experienced in the house of his brother. NO. II. Z

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