Than gratifies a happy soul, If thus at times the suitor stole "I have lived round the year: I saw The heart that gleans as it should glean, We think the concluding stanza peculiarly happy, in suggesting, rather than expressing, the thoughts which are meant to be produced on the reader's mind. The poem entitled "The Gipsy Beggar," (p. 249,) strikes us as a nearly perfect imitation of a somewhat different style, with some of those harsh touches which are characteristic of Wordsworth. The Beggar is thus described : "His was an ancient Roman's face, To its continual fret." He states that he is alone in the world, having neither wife nor children; his eye, meanwhile, giving sundry suspicious glances-"ten separate darts," "Upon an imp, that wildly broke "I looked upon the boy and him, 'Twas clear to me they were akin : Only the younger was less grim "But in the lips and lofty brows 'Twas evident that they were one, And in the eye, its sudden close And quick expansion; now, who knows Mr. Burbidge, however, thinks it impossible that the gipsy can be guilty of so deliberate a falsehood, and is upon the point of pulling out his purse, when "The imp went dancing down the lane, And never saw us standing there, When suddenly he fell; amain A horrid cry-a cry of pain The beggar upon this flies with all speed to lift up the fallen "imp❞— This subject, we think, is handled very much as Wordsworth would have handled it, though few, perhaps, would think the incident worth describing. The extracts we have hitherto given will not convey an idea of the remarkable power of language and rich ness of expression exhibited in some of these poems, combined with a fine perception of metrical harmony; qualities of great promise in a young writer. The following stanzas are from a poem describing a Vision of the Poets, (p. 146): "a mystic harp, twined round None knew their wherefore save himself who gave Light cheer, like grasses green gladdening a secret grave. "Thus saw I-Coleridge. Then again a change: Upon great Indian palaces: each bower Lived, but the frame was clay, and shrank with every shower. The beautiful and 'well-known Oriental image of Love is painted in the following graceful lines (p. 13): "They picture Love, in Indian tales, An infant on a milk-white flower, At evening's quiet hour; There nestling in his pearly boat, And all his play is, half asleep, To break the waves with frolic finger, Or hunt the twinkling orbs that linger Reflected in the soft blue deep." We have here a description which breathes the very freshness of a Summer morning (p. 17) :— "'Tis morn-the morn; at dawn of day The Italian sky, a sea of mist, And then the wind came up the south, Gave sweetest answer as it could; The poem called Mnemcion bears the appearance of hasty writing; and Mr. Burbidge would have done well to have submitted it before publication to the hand of some unsparing pruner. It is a rambling and wearisome composition, consisting of few materials, but those few worked up into every possible shape, and dressed in every conceivable variety of metaphor. It is, in fact, wholly made up of descriptions of the night (with frequent and extravagant addresses to the moon and stars), and of invocations of an unnamed lady, whom we cannot help strongly suspecting to be, like Dante's Beatrice, a vision of the author's imagination. We may be wrong, but to us the whole poem bears the appearance of fantastic display, rather than of real feeling. That Mr. Burbidge can write feelingly, his poems contain abundant evidence; but here the feeling, if any exist, is smothered beneath the mass of artificial decoration; so that the entire piece, instead of presenting the grand and touching simplicity of a Grecian temple, exhibits the effect of an edifice on which ornaments, often beautiful in themselves, are heaped with so little taste or meaning, that the eye wanders over their endless repetitions, vainly seeking to discover the archi tect's purpose or connecting principle of design. The idea of "The Madman's Day" appears to have been taken from the story called "a Madman's Manuscript" in the Pickwick papers. It supposes one who was once a maniac, but now in his right mind, to describe one of those fierce workings of frenzy which once possessed his brain. The attempt to describe the irresistible impulse which ran like fire through his blood, hurrying him he knew not whither, may be considered a tolerably successful one: but it must be confessed that his mode of narration, necessarily violent and impassioned, leaves some alarming doubts of his complete resto ration upon the reader's mind, as it must have done on that of his poor wife, who sits listening to his tale. In the shorter poems there is much variety; and many of them are devoted to drawing thoughts and morals from the contemplation of nature. In these we meet with many pleasing and original ideas, but the thoughts are not always clearly expressed, being obscured by a redundancy of words and metaphors, which often materially weaken the general effect of the conception. His descriptions of nature are often fresh and vigorous, and prove that he possesses observation and taste sufficient to ensure success in this department, if he proceeds to discipline his eye and hand upon right principles. Living, as he informs us, (p. 260,) in Warwickshire, he has but very ordinary scenery to employ his muse upon; but this is no disadvantage. The common objects of a quiet English landscape can never become hackneyed or common-place. They can no more be exhausted in poetry than in painting. The true poet will always find in them all, and more than all, he wants. But in order to describe nature with any success, Horace's rule must be remembered-Ut pictura poesis erit. As it is undoubtedly true that every great painter is essentially a poet, so he that would be the poet of nature must be a painter likewise. Their functions and qualifications are the same the powers of imagination or of fancy are similarly exerted in each. Both are sharers of " the vision and the faculty divine." They possess the same power of summoning before their mind's eye, not the vague and shadowy outline, not the dim and confused recollection, but the clear and distinct image of whatever they may wish to represent. The glorious conceptions of a great painter do not copy nature, but absolutely surpass her; inasmuch as they represent that which nature seems ever striving after, without ever quite attaining. Thus much of the previous process in the mind it is precisely the same in each. In what remains the depicting so as to convey to the eye or mind of others the image thus created, both ought to be guided by the same principles. The various parts of which the piece is to consist must be grouped with a view to their effect in combination with each other; the colouring must be heightened or subdued, according to position, light and shade, or distance. The picture must not be overwrought; not a stroke permitted which does not contribute to the general effect. There must not be distortion, by the undue prominence of subordinate objects; there must not be incongruity, by the immediate juxta-position of what is noble with what is mean. We do not mean to assert that the great poets worked by rules which their own instinctive and unerring taste rendered needless ; but let the pictures in Homer, for example, be examined with this view, and it will be found that the principles of their composition are such as we have described. The poet, therefore, must look at nature with a painter's eye; and like him, his aim must be not to paint with minute accuracy every vein in the leaf, every ripple in the stream, but to convey the spirit of nature herself to the mind of his reader. Let him- leave something to be filled up by the reader's imagination, which will supply it in the manner most agreeable to itself. These plain principles, the violation of which would be intolerable in painting, are sometimes, we think, unheeded in modern poetry. Some of Mr. Burbidge's pictures lie open to the charge of disproportion; in others the objects are too separate and detached; we want those masterly touches necessary to throw back, as it were, and combine the whole into one picture. The volume comprises a great number of sonnets; in which difficult style of composition Mr. Burbidge's success, if not complete, is such as to warrant us in auguring well of his future productions. Of the following we need say nothing; by its simple pathos and gentle flow of language it will recommend itself: "MADINGLY CHURCHYARD. "Three sides a grove of yews, a gloomy grove, " -(p. 234.) Under the title of "Darkness Departed" are classed some poems, which the author tells us were written "during that unsettled state of mind which, I suppose, most men some time or other in their lives pass through; a state which, however morbid in itself, may be necessary to the formation of a sure and settled health." That most men pass through an unsettled state of mind may be true; but that it is necessary at any period of life to be sunk in the depths of despair-that a kind of mis anthropic measles are to be undergone in order to attain a settled health of mind- -we are disposed to deny. We think, on the other hand, that contentment, and, consequently, happiness, is at all times within our reach, if we seek it rightly. We are truly glad, however, that these days of darkness are at length "departed ;" though we regret to notice in some of the other poems, traces of a similar unhealthy state of feeling. Mr. Burbidge asks in Mnemeion, (p. 50.) "Now wherefore is it that the mute world changes And dull with our grave tread all merry noises, At which old Autumn laughs, and Winter's self rejoices ?" Why, indeed? the reader may well ask. We will answer Mr. Burbidge out of his own mouth-(p. 284.) "Off with the petted gloom-the toy The heart which hath no inner blight The "observations" at the end of the volume are devoted to a refutation of an anticipated objection to some of the poems, as "too open revelations of private feeling." These, the author contends, must be judged of by the faculty exerted in their production, viz. the heart alone. "Here then," he proceeds, "is no room for criticism, and to one, I think, who feels the solemnity which surrounds every phase of a human soul, there is still less room for disgust." (p. 346.) We think the apology unnecessary; it being generally acknowledged that by writing in poetry, we become privileged to speak of feelings which could not, without ridicule be revealed in prose. But the privilege is far too high and sacred a one to be trifled with as it has been in modern times. For a man to publish for the world's instruction every slightest shade of emotion which passes over his mind-every thought, wise or foolish, which the most trifling object may chance to suggest-this has, to say the least, an appearance of ostentation. For the idea must be, that all this must needs interest the public in the same degree in which it is interesting to the individual himself. We are far from quoting Mr. Burbidge as a complete example of what we have been saying; but it appears to us, that from feeling intensely, and from the habit of pondering over the workings of his own mind, he ascribes a degree of over importance to slight sensations, which leads him to write and publish such sonnets as that which we shall presently transcribe. There follows, moreover, another evil : this habit of constant and minute watching, places the mind under a species of restraint, which is fatal to the healthful and natural play of thought. There can be no such thing as free action under this system of surveillance; and the mind becomes strained into an unnatural liability to excitement from the most trivial causes. The result is, that the poet, continuing to look into his own inmost mind as the mirror of all true feeling, and finding there nothing but distortion to guide him, wanders farther and farther into error and absurdity; and thus, what is in fact self-deception, appears to the majority of his readers to be affectation. From such consequences as these, we hope that Mr. Burbidge's |