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shine is thrown over poverty or dullness of matter. Sometimes, too, in the midst of sportiveness, an effusion of tenderness occurs, extremely affecting. It is a most interesting spectacle, to survey the group of excellent persons assembled round our poet-their heroic exertions for his comfort, and his warm returns of gratitude: such scenes are among the greenest spots" of this world, and are almost enough to make us forget its miseries. His opinions on various subjects, expressed in these letters, flow less from any expansion of intellect or depth of penetration, than from plain sense, a cultivated understanding, and that clear-headedness which attends on virtue, and which enables it to discern many things which superior faculties, blinded by a bad heart or vicious habits, fail of discerning.

In the morality of his poems, Cowper is honourably distinguished from most of his brethren. Our poets have too often deviated into an incorrect system of morals, coldly delivered; a smooth, polished, filed-down Christianity; a medium system, between the religion of the Gospel and the heathen philosophy, and intended apparently to accommodate the two. There is nothing to comfort or guide us, no satisfying centre on which to fix our desires; no line is drawn between good and evil; we wander on amid a waste of feelings sublimated to effeminacy, desires raised beyond the possibility of gratification, and passions indulged till their indulgence seems almost a necessary of life. We rise with heated minds, and feel that something still is wanting. In Cowper, on the contrary, all is reality; there is no doubt, no vagueness of opinion; the only satisfactory object on which our affections can be fixed, is distinctly and fully pointed out; the afflicted are consoled, the ignorant enlightened. A perfect line is drawn between truth and error. The heart is enlisted on the side of religion; every precept is just, every motive efficacious. Sensible that every vice is connected with the rest; that the voluptuous will become hard-hearted,

and the unthinking licentious; he aims his shafts at all: and as Gospel truth is the base of morality, it is the groundwork of his precepts.

In the remarks we have hazarded on poetical morality, far be it from us to aim at introducing a cheerless monastic air into works of fancy, or diminishing the quantum of poetic pleasure our system would have the very contrary effect. It would relieve us from revolting pictures of crime, touched, retouched, and dwelt upon even to weariness; from long depressing complaints of the miseries of life; from the persevering malignity which pains us in reading the works of some of our most approved satirists; from the tinge of impurity, which makes us dread the pleasure we receive from some exquisitely wrought descriptions; from the want which we feel in many a favourite character of fiction-Poetry would be as cheerful as the spring sun, and as vivifying, All the sources of delight would remain, only heightened and rectified; our pleasure would be more full, and it would be without fear.

SONNET TO MRS. UNWIN.

BY COWPER,

Mary! I want a lyre with other strings,

Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew,

An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebased by praise of meaner things, That ere through age or wo I shed my wings, I may record thy worth with honour due, In verse as musical as thou art true, And that immortalizes whom it sings.

But thou hast little need. There is a book

By seraph's writ with beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of God not rarely look,

A chronicle of actions just and bright:

There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine, And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thes

mine.

LORD BYRON.

An Extract from the Quarterly Review.

With kinder feelings to Lord Byron in person and reputation no one could ap proach him than ourselves: we owe it to the pleasure which he has bestowed upon us, and to the honour he has done to our literature. We have paid our warmest tribute to his talents-it is their due.

We will touch on the uses for which!

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But this mode of defiance may last too long, and hurry him who indulges it into further evils; and to this point our observations tend. The advice ought not to be contemned on account of the obscurity of those by whom it is given :-the roughest fisherman is an useful pilot when a gallant vessel is near the breakers; the meanest shepherd may be a sure guide over a pathless heath, and the admonition which is given in well meant kindness should not be despised, even were it tendered with a frankness which may resemble a want of courtesy,

It is not the temper and talents of the poet, but the use to which he puts them, on which his happiness or misery is grounded. A powerful and unbridled imagination is the author and architect of its own disappointments. Its fascinations, its exaggerated pictures of good and evil, and the mental distress to which they give rise, are the natural and necessary evils attending on that quick susceptibility of feeling and fancy incident to the poetical temperament. But the Giver of all talents, while he has qualified them each with its separate and peculiar alloy, has endowed the owner with the power of purifying and refining them. But, as if to moderate the arrogance of genius, it is justly and wisely made requisite, that he must regulate and tame the fire of his fancy, and descend from the heights to which she exalts him, in order to obtain ease of mind and tranquillity. The mate. rials of happiness, that is, of such degree of happiness as is consistent with our present state, lie around us in profusion. But the man of talents must stoop to gather them, otherwise they would be beyond the reach of the mass of society, for whose benefit, as well as for his, Providence has created them. There is no royal and no poetical path to contentment and heart'sease; that by which they are attained is open to all classes of mankind, and lies within the most limited range of intellect. To narrow our wishes and desires within the scope of our powers of attainment; to

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I have thought

Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy, boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame"

-to stoop, in short, to the realities of life; repent if we have offended, and pardon if we have been trespassed against; to look on the world less as our foc than as a doubtful and capricious friend, whose applause we ought as far as possible to deserve, but neither to court nor contemn-such seem the most obvious and certain means of keeping or regaining mental tranquillity.

"Semita certe

Tranquillæ per virtutem patet unica vite.”

We are compelled to dwell upon this subject: for future ages, while our language is remembered, will demand of this why Lord Byron was unhappy? We retort this query on the noble poet himself while it is called "to-day." He does injustice to the world, if he imagines he has left it exclusively filled with those who rejoice in his sufferings. If the voice of consola tion be in cases like his less loudly heard than that of reproach or upbraiding, it is because those who long to conciliate, to advise, to mediate, to console, are timid in thrusting forward their sentiments, and fear to exasperate where they most seek to soothe; while the busy and officious intrude, without shame or sympathy, and embitter the privacy of affliction by their rude gaze and importunate clamour. But the pain which such insects can give only lasts while the wound is raw. Let the patient submit to the discipline of the soul enjoined by religion, and recommended by philosophy, and the scar will become speedily insensible to their stings. Lord Byron may not have loved the world, but the world has loved him, not perhaps with a wise or discriminating affection, but as well as it is capable of loving any one. And many who do not belong to the world, as the word is generally understood, have their thoughts fixed on Lord Byron, with the anxious wish and eager hope that he will bring his powerful understanding to combat with his irritated feelings, and that his next efforts will show that he has acquired the peace of mind necessary for the free and useful exercise of his splendid talents.

Counsellor Phillips.

The following Review is extracted from the last number of the Quarterly Review received in this country. As it relates to

an individual who has excited considerably the public attention, we insert it, in the expectation that it will be gratifying to our readers, without designing to make ourselves parties to the question of the merits of the individual whom it criti

cises.

I. The Emerald Isle, a Poem.

By Charles Phillips, Esq. Barrister at Law. Dedicated by Permission to the Prince Regent. London. 1813. Embellished with a full length Portrait of Brian Borhoime, King of Ireland.

II. The Speech of Mr. Phillips, delivered in the Court of Common Pleas in Dublin, in the Case of Guthrie versus Sterne; with a short Preface.

III. Speeches of Mr. Phillips on the Catholic Question; with a Preface. IV. An Authentic Report of the Speech of the CELEBRATED and ELOQUENT Irish Barrister, Mr. Phillips, delivered at Roscommon Assizes. V. The Speech of Counsellor Phillips on the State of England and Ireland, and on a Reform in Parliament; delivered at Liverpool, Oct. 1816.

31,

We have really been at a loss in what light to consider the series of works before us; they are all planned and constructed on a scale of such ridiculous exaggeration, there is so little law in the pleadings, so little poetry in the poems, and so little common sense in the prose, that we almost suspected that they were intended to ridicule that inflated and jargonnish style which has of late pre. vailed among a certain class of authors and orators in the sister kingdom. But, in opposition to this internal evidence, there are so many circumstances of external testimony, that we have been reluctantly driven to conclude that Mr. Charles Phillips is not a censor, but a professor of the new school; and that having lost his own wits, he really imagines that the

rest of the world may be brought to admire such fustian in verse and such fustian in prose as cannot, perhaps, be equalled except in Chrononhotonthologos, or Bombastes Furioso.

Our readers must be aware, that we are generally inclined (though we do not shrink from giving our own honest opinion) to permit authors to speak for themselves; and to quote from their own works such passages as may appear to us to justify our criticism. We will not be more unjust to Mr. Phillips, and shall, therefore, select from his poems and pamphlets a few of those parts which are marked by his peculiar manner, and which

we are well assured he considers as the most admirable specimens of his genius.

We shall begin with the following panegyric upon a certain King of Ireland, called Brian Borhoime, whose age was as barbarous as his name; and whose story is as obscure as Mr. Phillips's eulogy.

"Look on Brian's verdant grave-
Brian the glory and grace of his age;
Brian-the shield of the emerald isle;
The lion incensed was a lamb to his rage,
The dove was an eagle compared to his smile!
Tribute on enemies, hater of war,
Liberty's beacon, religion's bright star,

Wide-flaming sword of the warrior throng,

Soul of the Seneacha, "Light of the Song."

The darkness which envelops the history of old Brian may be pleaded in excuse of the above passage, but what shall be said for the following apostrophe to the late Bishop Berkely?-the Emerald Isle is, we ought to acquaint our readers, a series of apostrophes to Irish worthies, from Fin Macoul and Brian Borhoime, down to Mr. Curran and the wretched Dermody.

"And Berkely, thou, in vision fair
With all the spirits of the air,
Should'st come, to see, beyond dispute,
Thy deathless page thyself refute;
And, in it, own that thou could'st view
Matter-and it immortal too."

We shall now give a few instances of the nonsense on stilts, which Mr. Phillips believes in his conscience to be English prose; and however he may differ from us in his opinion of their merits, we venture to assert that

he will not accuse us of having select ed the worst passages.

Magna est veritas et prevalebitis a trite proverb, and no very complicated idea; yet this simple sentence is in Mr. Phillips's version bloated out to the following size.

"Truth is omnipotent, and must prevail; it forces its way with the fire and the precision of the morning sun-beam. Vapours may surround, prejudices may impede the infancy of its progress; but the very resistance, that would check, only condenses and concentrates it, until at length it goes forth in the fulness of its meridian, all life, and light, and lustrethe whole amphitheatre of Nature glow. ing in its smile, and her minutest objects gilt and glittering in the grandeur of its eternity."

Goldsmith had compared his Parish Priest

"To some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

This is one of the most simple and sublime passages in English poetry Mr. Phillips-who, by the way, is as great a plagiarist as Sir Fretful, and somewhat in his manner-thus adopts it as his own.

"The hand that holds the chalice should be pure, and the priests of the temple of Religion should be spotless as the vest ments of her ministry. Rank only degrades, wealth only impoverishes, and ornaments only disfiguare her; her sacred porch becomes the more sublime from its simplicity, and should be seated on an eminence, inaccessible to human passions -even like the summit of some Alpine WONDER, for ever crowned with the sun shine of the firmament, which the vain and feverish tempest of human infirmities. breaks through harmless and unheeded."

In this same style of travestie, Mr. Phillips renders either unintelligible or ridiculous every thing he touches. He censures Mr. Grattan" because," as he elegantly expresses it," an Irish native has lost ITS raciness in an English atmosphere." When he alludes to Monseignor Quarantotti's letter, he will not condescend to mention it but as "the rescript of Italian audacity." When the Duke of Wellington invades France, we are told that "an

Irish hero strikes the harp to victory upon the summit of the Pyrenees." And when he would say that Mr. Grattan is an ornament to his country, it is expressed "that he poured over the ruins of his country the elixir of his immortality"!

When some judicious persons at Liverpool toast the health of this wild ranter, he modestly and intelligibly describes the effect which this great event will have in Ireland

"Oh! yes, I do foresee when she (Ireland) shall hear with what courtesy her most pretentionless advocate (Mr. Phillips) has been treated, how the same wind that wafts her the intelligence, will revive that flame within her, which the blood of ages has not been able to extinguish. It may be a delusive hope, but I am glad to grasp at any phantom that fits across the solitude of that country's desolation" ! !

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There is, it seems, a certain Irishman of the name of Casey resident in Liverpool, and, we presume, he was one of the promoters of the beforementioned toast; for Mr. Phillips, after a magnificent description of this worthy gentleman, exclaims, in an agony of patriotism, "Alas, Ireland has little now to console her except the consciousness of having produced such men"-as Mr. Casey of Liverpool!

We reserve for the last example of Mr. Phillips's style, two passages which, we are informed by Mr. Phillips himself or his editor, (if indeed Mr. Phillips be not his own editor,) were received with enthusiastic applauses. The first is meant to be a satire on bigotry, and the other a panegyric on Mr. Grattan

"But, oh! there will never be a time with Bigotry-she has no head, and can not think-she has no heart, and cannot feel when she moves, it is in wrathwhen she pauses, it is amid ruin--her prayers are curses-her God is a demon

her communion is death-her vengeance is eternity-her decalogue is written, in the blood of her victims; and if she stoops for a moment from her infernal flight, it is upon some kindred rock to whet her vulture-fang for keener rapine, and replume her wing for a more sanguinary desolation !"

"When the screech-owl of intolerance was yelling, and the night of bigotry was brooding on the land, he came forth with

the heart of a hero! and the tongue of an angel! till, at his bidding, the spectre vanished; the colour of our fields revived, and Ireland, poor Ireland," &c. &c.

Such-to speak figuratively of this great figure-maker-such are the tumid and empty bladders upon which the reputation of Mr. Phillips is trying to become buoyant. We believe our readers will, by this time, think that we have fully justified our opinion of the style of this Dublin Demosthe

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MATION.

"Do not suppose I am endeavouring to influence you by the power of DECLA I am laying down to you the British law, as liberally expounded and solemnly adjudged. I speak the language of the English Lord Eldon, a Judge of great experience and great learning(Mr. Phillips here cited several cases as decided by Lard Eldon)-Such, Gentlemen, is the language of Lord Eldon. I speak also on the authority of our own Lord Avonmore—a Judge who illuminat ed the Bench by his genius, endeared it by his suavity, and dignified it by his bold uncompromising probity!!!-one of those rare men, who hid the thrones of law beneath the brightest flowers of literature, and as it were with the hand of an enchanter, changed a wilderness into a garden!"

No, declamation is not the weapon of Mr. Phillips!-One thing, indeed, we learn from all this, that Mr. Phillips's countrymen appreciate his legal talents at their true worth-We may be sure that he has published every frantic speech he ever made; and they are but two, and both on subjects in which the want of legal education and professional acquirement would be least observed; and accordingly we may say-to borrow a happy expression of Louis the XIVth's, relative to one of his chaplains who

had preached a flowery sermon on all things but religion-that if Mr. Phillips in his pleadings had only said a word or two about law, he would have spoken of every thing.

We now come to Mr. Phillips in the character upon which, of all others, it is evident he piques himself most, namely, that of a PATRIOT.

Mr. Phillips's first political pretension is honesty; he is, if you will take his own word for it, a model of integrity and decision, a pattern for all the Young men of the empire who will be warmed into emulation by Mr. Casey's Liverpool dinner. Lest our readers should doubt the modesty of this blushing Hibernian, we shall give his own words-a course which is always the safest, and with so profuse a talker as Mr. Phillips, the most decisive and convincing.

"I hope, however, the benefit of this day will not be confined to the humble individul (Phillips, scilicet) you have so honoured; I hope it will cheer on the young aspirants after virtuous fame in both our countries, by proving to them, that however, for the moment, envy, or them, there is a reward in store for THE ignorance, or corruption, may depreciate MAN (Phillips) WHO THINKS WITH INTEGRI

TY AND ACTS WITH DECISION.

Again, he assures his partial friends "who were crowding around him, that no act of his shall ever raise a blush at the recollection of their early encouragement."

But it is not the easy virtues of profession alone to which Mr. Phillips lays claim-he boasts, in a quotation, solemnly prepared for the occasion, that he is ready even to suffer for his country :—

"For thee, fair freedom, welcome all the past, For thee, my country, welcome e'en the last!"

Mr. Phillips's first publication, in the still earlier bloom of his youth, was, as our readers have seen, a poem called the Emeral Isle. It was dedicated, by permission, to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, "Ireland's Hope and England's Ornament." The poem did not belie the promise of the dedication; it is a perfect stream of praise, a shower of roses on every person who is named in it, from alpha to omega. T

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