We have inserted D.'s spirited translation of the Bohemian Fortuneteller, because we are anxious to collect at present all interesting gypsey notices that fall in our way;-but the story has been formerly, though not so well, exhibited in an English dress. At page 428 of our December Number, the pleasure grounds at Eglinton Castle are said to have been laid out after a design by the celebrated Brown, but we are now assured that Brown never was employed there, and that the Park, con sisting of more than 1500 acres, owes its plan and decoration chiefly to the good taste of the present Noble proprietor. In the same Number, at page 445, Major Drummond is said to have been the officer on duty in the Castle at the search for the Regalia in 1794: We now understand that the present Earl of Eglinton, then the Lieutenant-Governor of Edinburgh Castle, attended the Commissioners in his official capacity on that occasion. The Survey of French Literature, begun in our last Number, will be resum◄ ed in our next. Printed by George Ramsay & Co. THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY MISCELLANY. FEBRUARY 1818. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. ON THE QUESTION WHETHER POPE ings of the heart; but he was a wit, WAS A POET. THE question whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great poet, he must have been a great prose writer, that is, he was a great writer of some sort. He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most refined taste; and as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction of poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally passed for a poet, and a good one. If, indeed, by a great poet we mean one who gives the utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the utmost force to the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a great poet; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay the contrary way; namely, in representing things as they appear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice and passion, as in his critical essays; or in representing them in the most contemptible and insignificant point of view, as in his satires; or in clothing the little with mock-dignity, as in his poems of fancy; or in adorning the trivial incidents and familiar relations of life with the utmost elegance of expression, and all the flattering illusions of friendship or self-love, as in his epistles. He was not then distinguished as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the work and a critic, a man of sense, of observation, and the world; with a keen relish for the elegancies of art, or of nature when embellished by art, a quick tact for propriety of thought and manners, as established by the forms and customs of society, a refined sympathy with the sentiments and habitudes of human life, as he felt them, within the little circle of his family and friends. He was, in a word, the poet not of nature but of art: and the distinction between the two is this. The poet of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, of power, and of passion in his own breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, in its immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all men; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul of nature; to be identified with, and to foreknow, and to record the feelings of all men, at all times and places, as they are liable to the same impressions; and to exert the same power over the minds of his readers, that nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees the m as they are; he feels them in their universal interest; for he feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our common nature. Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank of it. He saw his own. nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he judged of the feelings of others by The capacious soul of Shakespeare had an intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could enter into the heart of man in all possible circumstances; Pope had an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, wished or wanted. Milton has winged his daring flight from heaven to earth through chaos and old night. Pope's muse never wandered with safety but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his library back again. His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his own garden, than on the garden of Eden; he could describe the faultless whole-length mirror that reflected his own person better than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven; a piece of cut-glass, or a pair of paste buckles with more brilliance and effect than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp than with "the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow," that fills the skies with its soft silent lustre, trembles through the cottage casement, and cheers the watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of personality and of polished life. That which was nearest to him was the greatest: the fashion of the day bore sway in his mind the antithesis of strength and grandeur: its power was the power of indifference. He had none of the inspired raptures of poetry: he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion. It cannot be denied that his chief excellence lay more in diminishing than in aggrandizing objects,-in checking than in encouraging our enthusiasm, in sneering at the extravagancies of fancy or passion, instead of giving a loose to them,-in describing a row of pins and needles rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans, in penning a lampoon or a compliment, and in praising Martha Blount! Shakespeare says, The herd hath more annoyance by the "In fortune's ray and brightness brize Than by the tyger: But when the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, As roused with rage, with rage doth sym. And with an accent tuned i' th' self-same key, Replies to chiding fortune.” There is hardly any of this rough rills; for earthquakes and tempests, over the immutable laws of nature. He preferred the artificial to the natural in external objects, because he had a stronger fellow-feeling with the self-love of the maker or proprietor of a gew-gaw than admiration of that which was interesting to all mankind alike. He preferred the artificial to the natural in passion, be-grass-plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling cause the involuntary and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried him away with a force and vehemence with which he could not grapple, while he could trifle with the conventional and superficial modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire, put them on or off like a masquerade dress, make much or little of them, indulge them for a longer or a shorter time as he pleased, and because, while they ainused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His mind was "Calm contemplation and poetic ease.” Yet within this retired and narrow circle, how much, and that how exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what refinement of sentiment! It is like looking at the world through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and anew consequence,-where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference, where the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beautiful deformed. The wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held to every thing; but still the exhibition is highly curious, and we know not whether to be most pleased or surprised. W. H. AFPAIRS OF SPANISH AMERICA. (Concluded from page 8.) THE insurrection of the Spanish colonists against the mother country has been general in other parts of South America, as well as in the Caraccas. To the westward, in the kingdom of New Grenada, all attempts to control the popular spirit proved compietely unsuccessful. A massacre, at Quito, of many of the principal Creoles, by the troops in the service of the viceroy of Lima, excited one universal sentiment of indignation among all classes, and was the signal for a general conspiracy against the established authorities. The viceroy of Santa Fé, though he endeavoured to temporize with the insurgents, was deprived of all authority; and, in 1811, a general congress was held at Santa Fé de Bogota, which, although they acknowledged Ferdinand VII., abjured all the provisional governments which had been established in Spain. The assembling of this congress, however, although they issued a formal acknowledgment of Ferdinand VII., was evidently a step to the abolition of his dominion over the country; for it was not to be imagined that the colonists, having succeeded in establishing a representative body on the ruins of the old authorities, would any longer submit to the government of the royal agents. The power, being once secured of regulating their own affairs, the inclination would soon arise to exercise this important privilege. Of the proceedings which have taken place in Peru, we are but imperfectly informed. In that kingdom, as far as we can learn, the royal authority does not appear to have been shaken, and troops have even been occasionally detached by the viceroy, to quell the more disturbed provinces. But, in the extensive viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, the revolution has taken a decided course; and this vast country, according to all appearances, seems for ever detached from the dominion of the mother-country. Not only has the independent party succeeded in establishing their authority in this province, but they have been enabled to send troops against the royal forces in Chili and Peru, which, according to the last accounts, had been routed and dispersed, and the whole country delivered from the bondage with which it was threatened. The viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, over the principal part of which the independent jurisdiction of the new government now extends, stretches in a direct line from Cape Lobos, which may be taken as its southern boundary, to the farthest northern settlements in Paraguay, upwards of 1600 miles, and from Cape St Anthony at the mouth of the Plata, to the ridge of mountains that separate it from Chili, nearly 1000 miles in breadth. By the union to it of the provinces of Charcas and Chiquito, it forms an extensive country, extending through all the variety of climates to be found in 26 degrees of latitude. Its general boundaries are Amazonia, or the country of those independent Indians who wander near the river of Amazons, and its tributary streams, on the north; on the east Brazil, and the Atlantic Ocean; Patagonia on the south; and Chili and Peru on the west. The provinces of which this viceroyalty is composed are, 1. Buenos Ayres, or Rio de la Plata, of which the chief towns are, Buenos Ayres, the capital, situated in lat. 34° 35' S. and long. 57° 24′ W. and containing 40,000 inhabitants, Santa Fé, Monte Video, and Maldonado, on the opposite shores of the river; 2. Paraguay, the chief town of which is Assumption, situated in lat. 24° 47′ S. and long. 59° 35′ W.; 3. Tucuman, of which the chief town is San Jago del Estero, situated in lat. 27° 40′, and long. 65, and Cordova; 4. Los Charcas or Potosi, formerly belonging to Peru, comprehending the towns of La Plata, situated in lat. 19° 33′ S. and long. 95° 30′ W.; 5. Chiquito, or Cuyo, formerly part of Chili. This vast country forms a compact body of land, nearly square, and generally level, of which the two great chains of mountains, called Cordilleras, the one on the side of Brazil, and the other on that of Peru, form the eastern and western boundaries. Towards the north a considerable tract of mountainous country, branching from both those ranges, gives rise to the numerous streams that flow in every direction, to join the great bodies of water which pour through the country from regions yet imperfectly known; whilst descending by gradual slopes, the western and southern parts run into extensive, and, in some places, marshy plains, to the foot of the Cordillera of Chili. The Plata is the great river by which this country is chiefly drained of its waters. This river runs through the centre of the continent, in a direction nearly from N. to S., and receives from the E. the two great rivers, the Parana and the Uruguay, which are formed by the conjunction of numerous tributary streams; and from the west, it receives the Pilcomayo, the Vermeio, and the Salado, which flow down the eastern declivity of the Andes. The greater part of the viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres forms one vast plain, of which the uniformity is scarcely ever interrupted by the most inconsiderable eminence,—and it has been calculated by barometrical observation, that the great river Paraguay, in its progress southward, does not fall above one foot in perpendicular height during a space of between 300 and 400 miles. The plains of Tucuman and the Gran Chaco, to the west of the Paraguay, are in general elevated and dry; though they are traversed by numerous rivers, and incommoded by marshes near the Paraguay. They are skirted by forests of a grandeur and antiquity seldom equalled, and these abound in all the wild animals of the country. From the banks of the Plata to Chili, also immense plains extend, which claim particular attention. "They present," (says Wilcocke in his interesting account of this country,)" a sea of waving grass, exSending for nine hundred miles, with very few interruptions of wood or eminence. The succulent and nutritive herbage of this tract affords pasture to those innumerable herds of cattle that rove unowned and unvalued over a great portion of South A merica, and whose hides and tallow a lone are occasionally sought after by the Spanish hunters, and form a principal article of the trade of Buenos Ayres. Wild horses, the progeny of those imported by the Spaniards, likewise abound in these natural meads. They wander from place to place against the current of the winds; and a traveller has stated, that they are in such numbers, that, being in those plains for the space of three weeks, he was continually surrounded by them. Sometimes they passed by, in thick troops, on full speed, for two or three hours together, during which time, he says, it was with great difficulty that the party preserved themselves from being run over and trampled to pieces. At other times, however, the same country has been passed over, and no horses have been seen.' These plains are called Pampas by the Spaniards, and they are haunted by tribes of Indians, who frequently rush upon the unwary traveller. There is a route from Buenos Ayres to Chili across these desert plains, on which no stations have been established for the accommodation or protection of travellers. Across this pathless expanse, the road is frequently pursued by means of the compass, as there exist no traces by which it can be discovered. The mode of travelling is thus described by Wilcocke. "They travel in covered carts or caravans, made almost as commodious as a house, with doors to shut, and windows on each side. Matrasses are laid out on the floor, on which the passengers sleep for the greatest part of the journey. The caravans are drawn by oxen, and are accompanied by baggage-horses and mules. They set out in the afternoon, two hours before sunset, travelling all night and till an hour after sunrise in the morning; they then rest, and partake of the provisions brought with them, or taken in hunting whilst on the journey; for those who are disposed for the chase take horses and dogs with them for the purpose. Travelling in this manner, and at so easy a rate, may perhaps be considered as making the expedition a pleasant journey; but several inconveniences are enumerated, that abate the pleasure, and sometimes convert it into pain. Besides the ap prehension of a surprise from the wild Indians, the excessive heats that pre |