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too hastily to be done well. The sense is not always perspicuously given, and the style has no pretensions to connected fluency. We would suggest, that to print a French word in italics is not quite equivalent to translating it. We do not know what authority Mr. Black can plead for such words as epoqua,'' tutory,' flexility, frigorification,' or for such phrases as almost no,' and chest! (bureau) of hydraulical operations; and are apt to think that no authority will bear him out in asserting (Vol. I. p. 48.) that 400=1312, and that 600-1968. For these and similar inaccuracies he will plead, no doubt, the rapidity with which translations like the present must be executed; but the public is not always so easily satisfied; and will very naturally inquire, whether the haste arises from a laudable eagerness to impart information, or from an interested avidity to distance competitors.-The translator's solicitude to ascertain the value of the different foreign measures, weights, and monies, and to convert them into those of our own country', deserves praise, and some of his notes are pertinent and judicious. But others, we are sorry to observe, are the very reverse of this. The profane levity which Mr. John Black has manifested at p. 168. Vol. I, on a subject which called for more than usual serious reflection, cannot be reprobated too much. Should the remaining sections of M. Humboldt's work fall into the hands of this translator, we would strongly advise him to deliver no more lectures to missionary societies.

The maps and geological sections are neatly engraved, though on a scale far inferior to the splendid originals. The map of New Spain, indeed, is so ingeniously reduced,' as to be of scarcely any value without the assistance ofa microscope. Art. II. The Fall of Cambria, a Poem. By Joseph Cottle. 12mo. 2. vols. pp. 532. Price 14s. Longman and Co. 1810. OUR times are unfavourable, to the last degree, to the

writers of that kind of poetry commonly called Epic; a denomination about which there has been, among critics, a vast deal of superstition-a denomination as fairly applicable, for what any of them can shew to the contrary, to any poetical narration of the great military transactions. that have decided the destiny of a state, as to the Iliada denomination, therefore, which might with perfect propriety have appeared in the title-page of this work, had the author deemed it worth while to be tenacious of so trifling a point of rank. The present times, we observe, are unfavourable, because a great part of the impressive power of the heroic poem obviously depends on the contrast between such transactions as it narrates, and the orVOL. VI

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dinary course of human events. We have very naturally been accustomed to calculate the effect of this sort of poem, on an assumption that the fall of great states and monarchs, the extinction and creation of imperial dynasties, the exploits of great heroes, and such conflicts of armies as transfer whole nations to a new dominion, are things of so rare occurrence as to be of themselves adapted to take possession of the utmost faculty of attention and wonder, and therefore to need nothing but the eloquence of poetry to give them an overpowering magnificence. In their plainest mode of representation they must rise before our view, it is presumed, with somewhat of the aspect of sublime mountains: the effect of their appearing in poetry will be as when those mountains are seen in the state of volcanoes. But this high advantage of the epic poemits having the province of celebrating a class of events which, in even the humblest style of recital, would be exceedingly striking to the imagination-is, along with so many other high and prescriptive things, totally abolished in the present age. The fall of monarchs-the end of a royal race-the catastrophe of empires-what solemn phrases these used to be, in the lessons of moralists, and the declamations of orators! How many pensive and awful reflections were they expected to awaken! To what a remote, and lofty, and tragical order of ideas were we supposed to be aspiring when we uttered them! But the time is at length come for such ambitious phrases to express but the ordinary events taking place within our sight. We are now become accustomed to reckon with great confidence, at the beginning of the year, that if we live to the end of it, we shall outlive some one or other ancient kingdom that is co-existing with us on the first of January. We take not the smallest credit for any unusual foresight in the prognostication; and when the event accordingly takes place, it seems so much a matter of course that it should have happened, that it is not till after a considerable interval of reflection that the mind admits any very grave impression of its importance. The impression is not so much made by the event itself directly, as by our reflective wonder that it has impressed us so little. But both our direct and our reflective ideas of the magnitude of such an event are soon swept away by that incessant rapid progress of revolution, which is overturning another and still another throne-destroying the boundaries of states—either reducing those states to the condition of provinces of one vast rapacious empire, or supplanting their ancient institutions by new forms and names of government-and consigning the hereditary monarchs and their courts to obscurity and

captivity, or driving them to the extremities and islands of Europe, or even to the other hemisphere. In this career of revolution, war has unfolded all its splendid and terrible forms, in such a crowded succession of enterprises and battles, with every imaginable circumstance of valour, skill, and destruction, that its grandest exhibitions are become fa miliar to us, almost to insipidity. We read or talk, over our wine or our coffee, of some great battle that has recently decided the fate of a kingdom, with an emotion nearly as transient as of an old bridge, carried away in our heighbourhood by a flood, or a tree overthrown by the wind or struck with lightning. It is, even after every allowance for the natural effect of iteration and familiarity, perfectly astonishing to observe what a degree of indifference has come to prevail in the general mind, at the view of events the most awful in their immediate exhibition, and the the most portentous as to their consequences.

Now it is very evident that this state of the public mind must be unfriendly in the extreme, as we began by asserting, to the labours and hopes of epic poets. It is the chief object of their unfortunate task to excite the sentiments of awe and astonishment by the representation of events, for the most part, of greatly inferior magnitude to those (of the very same class,) which are just sufficing to keep up our newspapers and annual registers to the competent pitch for amusing us. It is true that the poets, by going back several ages for their subjects, have the advantage of ex-~ hibiting their heroes and great transactions with that venerable aspect of antiquity which is strangely imposing to the imagination; but this is more than counterbalanced in favour of the newspapers by the momentous and direct relation of the present events to our own interests. The facts, too, of the epic narrative, instead of occupying the . mind so as to withdraw its attention from the present events, have a quite contrary operation, tending rather to reflect its thoughts back to these nearer and greater objects. And this reflected attention involves comparison; which we shall be sure to make with a considerable degree of disposition to find the transactions of our own more magnificent than those of former ages. We shall thus be made to contemplate with more attention, and, through a kind of reacting pride, with more admiration, the events of the last year or month, in consequence of the poet's challenging us with a pompous display of the battles and revolutions of remote periods,so that not only we are likely to behave ill to contemporary epic poets, but even Homer himself has need of all the sanctity of antiquity, and all the surrounding

throngs of devotees of every time and nation, to protect him against the pert profaneness, with which we might be tempted to ask, What are all your conflicts on the Phrygian plain, and what is the fall of Troy, compared with what is taking place in our times about once every six months?" The author then of the Fall of Cambria,' will not be surprised to find himself partaking in some measure the misfortune which a revolutionary period has brought on poets, by rendering what were once accounted the most inspiring subjects vulgar and almost insipid.

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If this diminution of the interest of heroic poetry had taken place from any other cause, it would not perhaps have been regretted by a Christian moralist, who feels it quite time that the characters and actions which are so pernicious in fact, should cease to be attractive in description. The moral effect of exhibiting martial excellence in an attractive form would be very equivocal, even in a case with the best imaginable conditions. Some of these conditions would be, that the contest should bear the clear evidence of perfect justice on the one side, and therefore iniquity on the other that the defenders of the just cause should fight purely from the love of justice, not for military glory, as it is called; that the chiefs among these defenders should have so much general virtue, that their valour in a just cause should not be the means of seducing us into a partiality for some vice in another part of the character; and that the perhaps equally valiant combatants on the side of injustice should be so represented, as to become, by means of the other parts of their characters, or from the fact of their being on the side of injustice, so decidedly the objects of our antipathy, that their bravery, however splendid, should conduce nothing, towards conciliating us to the bad men, and the bad cause. It is doubtful whether a careful observance of all these conditions, in a poem which should describe with the most animated eloquence (as it might, without violating these conditions,) the most brilliant achievements of war, would be enough to prevent those achievements so described, from exciting a feeling of more complacency towards the work of destruction than ought ever to be entertained towards it,-than it would be strictly moral to entertain towards it even in a case in which it should be attended with all conceiveable circumstances of justice. But if the moral influence on the reader's mind, from a grand poetical celebration of heroes and heroic exploits, with even perfect justice on their side, a celebration, too, conducted with a strict regard to all the other conditions above suggested, would be at the best equivocal, it is quite

needless to ask, what must naturally be the influence on his mind from the celebration of such wars as have actually made the grandest figure in poetry,-which poetry has, at the same time, violated all the conditions on which it might be just barely pardonable to display any, even the most righteous war, in attractive colours.

From the general character of Mr. Cottle's writing, we should conclude with confidence, that no poet ever had a higher respect for the purest principles of morality. There is strong evidence of this in the present performance. But the subject, like almost all such subjects, involved difficulties, which no dexterity could overcome. Was the subjugation of Wales, by Edward I. a just or an unjust achievement? If a just one, then our feelings are engaged pointedly against justice by our sympathetic interest in the heroic and amiable character of the Welch Prince Llewellyn, and some of his associates, and the patriotic and enthusiastic energy of the people. If it was unjust, if it was an enterprize of wicked ambition in the monarch, and wicked loyalty in his chiefs, then it is an immoral lenity that we are tempted to exercise towards these workers of iniquity, by the magnanimity and generosity which the poet frequently makes them display. It is true, he has made some of the English leaders very detestable characters; but still, the characters of the men and the enterprize are not so managed on the whole, as to inspire such an entire de estation of the undertaking throughout, as we ought to feel if it was an iniquitous undertaking. Perhaps indeed the poet felt, and perhaps justly felt, that it would be accounted an unpardonable violation of courtesy and patriotism, to offer to English readers a work which, in celebrating a great national achievement, should represent our own country as atrociously in the wrong. But it is a striking disadvantage in the choice of a subject, that either justice must be compromised on the one hand, or a sentiment so invincible, and accounted so virtuous, as patriotism, systematically affronted on the other. We speak on the supposition of the English being in the instance in question, completely in the wrong.-It is another serious disadvantage of the present subject, that how much soever the English invasion may appear to be in the wrong, it is evidently to the advantage of both the nations that it should be successful, this being the only event that could for ever put an end to their wars, and to the savage condition of their border territory; and this also promising to the minor nation incalculable advantages in point of progressive knowledge and civilization. Thus a civil war is raised among our feelings, some of which are im