And evermore thy lullaby renew

To howling winds and storms that o'er thee flee:
All hail, ye battlements of ancient liberty!

• There the dark raven builds his dreary home;
The eagle o'er his eyrie raves aloud;

The brindled fox around thee loves to roam,
And ptarmigans, the inmates of the cloud:
And when the summer flings her dappled shroud
O'er reddening moors, and wilds of soften'd gray,
The youthful swain, unfashion'd, unendow'd,
The brocket and the lamb may round thee play:
These thy first guests alone, thou fair, majestic Tay!?
'O, I might tell where ancient cities stood!
And I might sing of battles lost and won;
Of royal obsequies, and halls of blood;

And daring deeds by dauntless warrior done.
Since Scotland's crimson page was first begun,
Tay was the scene of actions great and high;
But aye when from the echoing hills I run,
My froward harp refuses to comply ;-

The nursling of the wild, the Mountain Bard am I.'

This tale is simply as follows. The first canto is nearly filled with a royal chase: the king of Scotland and his merrymen, with hound, grey-hound, blood-hound, and bayard, following after hart, and roe-buck, and gor-cock. The matter is all no doubt very scientifically discussed, and in true sporting phrase: but we pass it over, as but little interesting to our readers. During the chase, fogs and mists arise:

The morning rose, but scarce they could discern
When Night gave in her sceptre to the day,

The clouds of heaven were moor'd so dark and dern.'

And, under cover of this darkness, the monarch contrives to 'steal away' from his courtiers. At length, however, he returns; 'the nobles found him pleased, nor farther strove to 'know; and the chase proceeds with no other interruption than some wondrous face of flame,' that we do not quite understand, ' in the pavilioned room;' and a song that likewise we do not quite understand, but in which, we have no doubt, more intelligent readers would find both spirit and beauty.

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'There wals ane auld caryl wonit in yon howe,
Lemedon! lemedon! ayden lillelu!

His face was the geire, and his hayre was the woo,
Sing Ho! Ro! Gillan of Allanhu !'

At the conclusion of the song

Enter'd a stranger guest in poor array!'

And beckoned the king forth

'With manner that denial would not brook.'

The king goes off with him, and after an absence of nine days returns to the Scottish court. And so ends the first canto.

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،

The second changes the scene without ceremony or apology to a highland cottage: the dramatis personæ are, a man of right ungainly courtesy,' his unyielding dame,'' the lovely May, their only child,' and 'Albert of the glen,' the 'May's' destined husband. One wet day there came, we are told, a stranger to the cottage,' in minstrel garb arrayed.'

• Short the entreatance he required to stay!

He tuned his viol, and with veh'mence play'd,
Mistress and menial, maid and matron gray,

Soon mix'd were on the floor, and frisk'd in wild affray.'

The poet himself seems highly delighted with the fiddling of the stranger and the dancing of the cottagers: but we may doubt whether the reader will be so. The whole canto appears to us vulgar and puerile; a thorough mistake of coarseness for humour. The fiddler' stays some days at the cottage.

The next canto introduces us to the consequences of his stay, a boy, comely as the morn,' a father far away, and 'mother all too young.' In the fourth canto the mother sets out with her babe to seek her lover; and, in the fifth, she recognises him in the person of the king.

The tale, on the whole, is patch-work; without life, and with few bursts of poetry. Such as there are, we shall endeavour to find.

The following description is pretty.

• Westward they past by bank and greenwood side,

A varied scene it was of wonderous guise;

Below them parting rivers smoothly glide,

And far above their heads aspiring rise

Gray crested rocks, the columns of the skies,
While little lowly dells lay hid between:

It seem'd a fairy land! a paradise!

Where every bloom that scents the woodland green
Open'd to Heaven its breast by human eye unseen.

،

Queen of the forest, there the birch tree swung

Her light green locks aslant the southern breeze;

Red berries of the brake around them hung;

A thousand songsters warbled on the trees:
A scene it was befitting youth to please.
Too well it pleased, as reverend legends say!

Unmark'd the hour o'er lovers' head that flees! p. 62:

Mr. Hogg has well described his own muse.

، Cease, thou wild Muse, thy vague unbodied lay.
What boots these wanderings from thy onward tale?

I know thee well: when once thou fliest astray,
To lure thee back no soothing can avail.
Thou lovest amid the burning stars to sail,
Or sing with sea-maids down the coral deep;
The groves of visionary worlds to hail,
In moonlight dells thy fairy rites to keep,

Or through the wilderness on booming pinion sweep.' p. 82. Ila Moore's song over her babe is not quite original; but the reader must be satisfied with what he can get.

"Be still, my babe! be still!-the die is cast!
Beyond thy weal no joy remains for me!
Thy mother's spring was clouded and o'erpast
Erewhile the blossom open'd on the tree!
But I will nurse thee kindly on my knee,
In spite of every taunt and jeering tongue;

O thy sweet eye will melt my wrongs to see!
And thy kind little heart with grief be wrung!
Thy father's far away, thy mother all too young!
"If haggard poverty should overtake,

And threat our onward journey to forelay,
For thee I'll pull the berries of the brake,

Wake half the night, and toil the live-long day;
And when proud manhood o'er thy brow shall play,
For me thy bow in forest shall be strung.

The memory of my errors shall decay,
And of the song of shame I oft have sung,
Of father far away, and mother all too young!
"But O! when mellow'd lustre gilds thine
And love's soft passion thrills thy youthful frame,

Let this memorial bear thy mind on high

Above the guilty and regretful flame,

eye,

The mildew of the soul, the mark of shame! pp. 91, 92. The child was unholy, and the mother has great trouble to keep the fairies from it.

The Palmer watch'd beside the hissing flame,
The mother clasp'd her child in silence deep;
That speech of mystery thrill'd her ardent frame,
For why? -she knew the fays their wake did keep
To reave her child if she should yield to sleep!
No sleep she knew-if woman's word is aught-
But, venturing o'er her coverlet to peep,
Whether through glamour or bewilder'd thought,
She there beheld a scene with awful wonder fraught.

From every crevice of the wall there look'd
Small elvish faces of malignity!

And O! their gleaming eyes could ill be brook'd!
All bent upon the babe that slumber'd by!
Ready they seem'd upon their prey to fly,

And oft they sprung or stole with wary

tread;

But o'er the couch a form of Majesty

Stood all serene, whose eye the spirits fled,

Waring the golden wand she waved around the bed.' pp. 106-7.

Art. VIII. Memoirs of the late Thomas Holcroft, written by Himself, and continued to the Time of his Death, from his Diary, Notes, and other Papers. 3 Vols. 12mo. pp. Price 11. 1s. Longman and Co. 1816.

M R. HOLCROFT was of the lowest parentage; so low, indeed, that after having passed through all sorts of wretchedness, the place of a stable-boy at Newmarket was to him, and to his father for him, an object of ambition. He was afterwards a player, and then a writer for the stage in every situation shewing an ardent mind and a kind disposition.

The first part of his life, the only interesting part of this work, was written, or rather dictated, by himself during his last illness, at such short intervals as pain and weakness allowed. So anxious was he in the business, that he assured his medical attendant, he would not care to what pain he might be put, could his life be lengthened but six months, for the completion of this work.

Mr. Holcroft certainly possessed natural powers, which, under advantageous circumstances of development, might have qualified him to rank, as a writer, in a much higher order; but, from a deficiency of education, and an early and lasting association with a certain class, there is a want of material in all his works. He has sagacity, but no depth: he can say well what he knows, but he knows very little.

Art. IX. Christian Morality; or, a Hint to Gospel Preachers: a Sermon, delivered in the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, Oct. 13, 1816. By the Rev. Wm. Hett, M. A. 8vo. pp. 16. Price 1s.-Robinson, London, 1817.

W

E do not feel quite sure that this is not a literary hoax; a direct quiz upon the Bishop of Lincoln's clergy; and if so, we must reprobate in the strongest terms the unwarrantable liberty taken with the name of William Hett, Master of Arts. We are as fond of a joke as other persons; but then, even a joke should have its proper limits. It should not, for instance, lead the facetious Author into profaneness like the following.

If any created being hath, for any length of time, persevered in a regular and uniform obedience to the blessed will of God, the original similitude is thereby augmented and improved. This increase of likeness occasions a mutual and increased esteem for each other, and a reciprocal desire of pleasing.'

Satire should not violate probability. The following sentence displays ignorance far beyond the propriety of fiction.

These great preachers (the Gospel preachers) entertain their hearers with high-flown harangues upon the utter depravity of the human heart, regeneration, conversion, justification by faith alone; in a word, upon some one of those five points.'

Again, the pompous inanity of the following declaration, is obviously overcharged.

I myself am thoroughly convinced that morality, genuine morality, is one main part of the Christian religion.' (!!) What is it, 1 pray you, which half-yearly fills our prisons with criminals, and sends such numbers into exile every year, but the frequent transgression of the rules of common morality? I may therefore reasonably expect your careful attention, while I am laying before you a formal defence of Christian morality."

We shall transcribe one sentence more, which intimates that the supposed author is not very 'particular' in his belief, whatever he may be in his practice.

"We are expected not only to believe what Jesus Christ and the apostles have taught, but moreover and in a more particular manner, to act as they acted in the various occurrences of life.'

Now, we appeal to our readers, whether the vulgar arrogance and ignorant impiety displayed in these passages, can be credibly imputed to a preacher in Lincoln Cathedral! whether it is probable that a man pretending to a zeal for morality, could e hibit so malignant a spirit in reference to preachers who press upon their hearers those essential doctrines which present the only adequate motive to Christian holiness! whether, finally, a man, at the very moment he is contending for those old fashioned and peremptory commands,' or as he elsewhere terms them, those excellent injunctions,' which God, by his servant "Moses, laid before the children of Israel for their observation,' should altogether overlook the ninth commandment, and imagine that if he does not kill, does not commit adultery, does not steal, he may bear false witness against his brethren, with impunity!

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Should Mr. Hett's friends be desirous of buying up the copies of this burlesque of a Sermon, that which has been sent us, and we designed to preserve as a literary curiosity, is much at their

service.