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Are led by the nose!

And some are scooping their graves with their toes!

The machinal Monks of Latrappe!

"The Monks, the Monks of Latrappe!
'Tis noon, and a call to prayer
From "Angelus Domini" sweeps through

the air.

Now prostrate on earth's cold lap

Mist-like they lie, sans motion or sound; And yet with nought of mishap:

When, lo! with a bound,

All spring to life, as from 'neath the ground:

The mimical Monks of Latrappe!

"The Monks, the Monks of Latrappe! Around the frugal board,

They chant a hymn of laud to the Lord, And then their girdles unstrap;

One meal per day is spread for a feed; Of meat, or fish, not a scrap,

But water and weed,

That sin or scurvy never may breed In the marrowless Monks of Latrappe!

"The Monks, the Monksof Latrappe!

Weary and worn, lean and lank,

Bard, Statesman, Orator, and Sage:
First Prophet of thy land and age;
'Tis thine Opinion's war to wage,
To knoll Oppression's knell :
And the halo of fame,
That encircles thy name,

Through the vista of ages in lustre shall
swell-

A Washington, Chatham, and Fell!"

p. 84.

Happy were the days in Lamartine's life when the poem (a translation of which is now under notice)* was written. Happy were those days of love and dreams of liberty and glory, ere reality came with its rude, material shock to destroy the beautiful creation of enthusiasm and imagination.

Happy is the unhappiness of a young poet, that vague feeling of indefinite yearnings after beauty and truth, that magnificent epoch of gorgeous dreamings never to be realised; that fantastic mausoleum, built by the genius of the lamp for the reception of imaginary sorrows as yet unborn, and which, in most cases, advancing life and healthier feelings convert into a smiling homestead of living joys. As in eastern cemeteries, houseless and benighted men find shelter and security in the tombs from which their young imaginations would have recoiled with horror, so is

They lay them down on a pallet of it that in the decline of life we replank,

With hair-shirts their limbs to wrap.

One dreams of storms, another of calms,

A third of the Warder's tap;

And some of their psalms,

And some of a world of bliss and balms, The martyrised Monks of Latrappe !"

We do not know a more appropriate way of taking leave of our present author and introducing the next, than by quoting the invocation with which Mr. Breen concludes his volume. Whether the last line contains a pun, a prophecy, or a panegyric on the illustrious individual addressed, we leave to the intelligence of the reader, confessing our own extreme uncertainty on the subject.

"Friend of the free, the bright, the brave,

Patriot of high emprise!

Great beacon-light o'er Freedom's wave,
Lamartine! rise!

enter gladly those "antres vast," which a fantastic and unfounded melancholy had once invested with such gloom, and which now appear to be the brightest memories of our existence. How sunny and cheerful must be the recollection of that time to Lamartine, when

66

chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy," he paid the homage of his imitation to Byron. When, with love and faith, with rank and wealth, with youth and hope, his every thought

"Was of the Muse, and of the poet's fame, How fair it flourisheth and fadeth not."

How different his present experiences, when, after being the virtual sovereign of France for three of the most extraordinary months the world has ever seen, when the peace of Europe hung upon his lips, and his words of inspiration and power falling on the charmed ears of the

*The last Canto of Harold's Pilgrimage, from the French of Lamartine, rendered into English by the Author of "The Poetry of Earth," and other pieces. Dublin P. Dixon Hardy and Sons.

fierce democracy of Paris, realized the fabled miracles of Orpheus, he is compelled to extricate himself from difficulties brought on, we believe, by public services, by the hasty and imperfect production of unworthy novelettes.

"The last canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" adds but little to the adventures of that celebrated wanderer. He can, however, roam no more, as his last speech and dying declaration are chronicled by M. Lamartine. If Byron were living, we suppose he would have been as angry with the French continuator, as Cervantes was with Avellaneda, but though destitute of novelty in its construction, and deficient in adventures, except a few which are too romantic even for " a romaunt," and which might have been better omitted, the poem is full of noble images, expressed with the exquisite felicity of modern French versification, where the frozen antitheses of Boileau melt into the murmuring water-drops of balanced but sweetly modulated melody.

The

The translator has acquitted himself of his task very creditably, and has contended with difficulties of no common order. The Spenserian stanza being unknown to French poetry, the original is composed of stanzas of unequal length, all consisting of the ordinary couplets of French heroic verse. translator, we doubt wisely, preferred that his poem should resemble, in metre and external form, the English poem of Byron, rather than the French original. Thus he has often to pause, when there is no corresponding cessation in the ideas, and to wind up every stanza with a "needless Alexandrine," which is often necessarily weak, from his having no strong figure or thought in that place on which

"To build the lofty rhyme."

He is, however, often poetical and melodious, and brings out his author's meaning clearly and with effect. There are, however, defects of rythm and language which we can hardly attribute altogether to carelessness. Frequently the flow of the ten-syllable metre is interrupted by a glaringly defective line, sometimes consisting only of eight feet, and sometimes reaching to twelve; while inelegant elisions such as

How oft thy claim's dishonoured mid the strife;"

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article. Exotics they unquestionably are, but still possessed of a hardy and vigorous constitution, which enables them to strike their roots deep and firm in the not ungenial soil of English poetry. They, however, perpetually remind one-and not unpleasingly-of the great German original from whose prolific seed they have grown. That parent tree, a wonderful tree of good and evil, like unto that which grew in the midst of Paradise, which the creative hand of Goethe planted in the midst of the smiling garden of modern poetry. Of its tempting fruits, the most inquiring and the most philosophical spirits have been the foremost to taste. The false promise of the ancient tempter, that those who would eat of that fruit would not die, seems to be fulfilled by the modern Mephistophiles, if we are to judge of that fact by the increasing vitality and probable immortality of the author of Festus, the greatest English devourer of the forbidden fruit of Faust that has yet appeared. Another promise, that of becoming like unto gods, seems also to have attained its fulfilment. To the poets of this school nothing is hidden, nothing is unknown; they dart through space with the rapidity of a comet, are present at the accouchment of Chaos, see the infant worlds wrapped in "the trailing garments of the night" as in swaddlingclothes, and handed over to Time, the wet-nurse of creation. They look on while the spirit of development or change closes up the lids of some decrepid old planet, whose euthanasia they sing, or stand trembling before the Angel of Destruction, who, like Saturn, devours the baby worlds as they are born. Of this school of poets the latest, the most healthy, and the most comprehensible, is Mr. Scott, the author of "Lelio," a poem full to overflowing of the tenderest teaching, possessing much and and favourably power, grace distinguished from many of its class by a pure morality and an enlightened but undoubting Christianity.

The object of the poem seems to be to show what misery and sin may be avoided or atoned for, and what virtue and happiness attained, by the constant conviction and recollection that the ever-waking eye of God himself is fixed

steadily upon us in our every action. This feeling is not brought home to the hearts of the characters in the drama, through the agency of that internal monitor which lies in the depths of every one's breast, and which will speak if we but give it time and opportunity to make itself heard. With striking originality this is effected in some of the scenes between Lelio and the Angel, by what may be called an external conscience. When the vague feelings which but too often "come, like shadows, so depart," instead of passing thus unproductively over the heart, take bodily shape before the eye, and thus really move and influence the possessor, who then becomes a spectator.

"Some years since," says Mr. Scott, in his preface, "I amused myself with contemplating the probable result in the case of a man about to commit what he felt to be a crime, were he suddenly to behold the animated eye-ball, as it were, of the Phidian Jupiter fixed on him, and flashing with divine indignation. He could scarcely move, I thought, toward the commission of the meditated act, under the influence of that forbidding gaze.

"The question then naturally arose, whether there may not already exist something analogous to that fabled glance for all who would not willingly exclude it from their vision-something which, unlike the beaming of a material eye, would not, as long as it was duly regarded, grow familiar from sameness or weak by repetition."

Perhaps the best illustration of this idea, and certainly the most effective scene in this dramatic poem is the one we are about to quote. It must be premised that Lelio is invisible, being carried about through space for the purposes of instruction, by an Angel. The machinery of this portion of the poem differs slightly, if at all, from that used in "Queen Mab," "Cain," "Festus," and their imitations. LEONE is the representative of that too common class of men whom thoughtlessness and passion carry to the commission of crimes, bitterly, though unavailingly, to be repented of ever after. He is well contrasted by Lelio with another of the characters in the poem, Ridolfo, whose colder and duller nature

Lelio, a Vision of Reality; Hervor and other Poems. By Patrick Scott. London: Chapman and Hall. ̄ 1850.

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The love I feel; 'tis not self-satiate,

It lives but in the life it draws from thee!
Yes! if the fire that burns within me finds
Its natural outbreak in a warm regard,
Tempering its strength behind the veil which
o'er it

Thy bashful beauty throws-is this impurity?
Then be it mine! this noble ardour, not
The flickering of a ceremonial flame!
We can but love, we cannot love more dearly,
If some weak words, which the heart does
not hear,

Were mutter'd o'er our union-dear, dear
Ilya!

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His parting step-Oh! go not, go not! now, The demon-angel spreads his pinions o'er The panting maid; his fearful countenance Breathes into hers! All-seeing God! how chang'd

The freshness of that beauty-she is fallen; Fall'n from the height of her commanding

charms

To slave for a low passion! o'er her cheek
Creeps the pollution of consenting thought;
The vestal shrine of her deep eye is lit
With an unholy longing. Hell hath painted
Each feature in hot colours! Pitiless spirit,
Why didst thou bring me here? I did not

seek

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Real-yet how strangely in this beating breast,

There stirs an unreality of life,
That lifts me from myself and whispers,
'Think,'

Who is it lives, forgotten not forgetting,
Within that lowly dwelling? What will she,
Who hath so often felt for thee, feel when
She misses her on whom her aged eyes
Fell, as their daily treasure, her too, fled
From the dear fold of those expecting arms,
To this dark pleasure. 'Tis enough-I thank
thee,

Merciful Heaven, and thee, Leone, too,

For that one word-Oh! say it but again, And I could bless thee-ha! defy thee, too! Away! thou canst not touch me. Heaven's high hand

Is o'er me, on me-thine, Leone, thine, Falls from me nerveless, as did his who laid it

On God's own prophet, thus

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A Song of the Angels" follows, which is a long and elaborate ode in praise of woman, which, however interesting from its subject and mode of treatment, we must omit. A song which runs to the length of six or seven mortal pages would be rather formidable, even though proceeding from the lips of an angel. The enthusiastic admiration expressed by Lelio for Ilya prepares the reader for their future union. Their next meeting (at which the poem abruptly terminates) is after her final extrication from the unworthy suit of Leone, who himself is converted to repentance and virtue by beholding the wreck of Nina, one whom he had seduced by the same arts and flatteries that were, fortunately, unsuccessful in the case of

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