valuable is done, unless they "read authors singly, read them throughout, read them over and over again, till the spirit of the writer is transfused into the mind of the pupil," is to hold a language, which, if it meet with belief, will have no effect but to dishearten. Not one individual in a hundred relishes writings like those of Hume, or the prose writings of Milton, till he has grown up to man's estate. Not one in ten, of all to whom the English language is vernacular, possesses that knowledge of Shakspeare, which is here enjoined of Homer, on the part of our youth." The school-boy has done well, who, by diligent use of grammar and dictionary, can construe, parse, and scan his author. To enter into his spirit and relish his beauties, to their full extent, is the attainment of mature years and mature studies. 66 Matins and Vespers with Hymns and Occasional Devotional Pieces. By JOHN BOWRING. First American from the second London edition. Boston. Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins. 1827. MR. BOWRING's poetical career has been peculiar and remarkable; and although he has not attained a name that will stand with those of Byron and Cowper, he has yet gained an honorable distinction and deserves to be gratefully remembered. Occupied as he has been in active life, busy in the bustling and confounding scenes of the world, he has yet, by the force of an indefatigable ardor and uninterrupted industry, accomplished as much in the walk of letters, as could be reasonably expected of a retired scholar with full leisure. That he has done it all as well as under other circumstances he might have done, we do not say. It would have been a miracle if he had. It is a wonder, and no small one, that his labors have been so excellent in execution as they are. If he had written less, he would doubtless have attained a higher eminence as an author; and yet it is almost unfair to say this, when it is remembered how popular and beautiful, how finished too, are his "Specimens of the Russian Poets,"— with what a variety of diction, what a choice and felicity of metre ; and how successfully he has thrown over those charming compositions the air of originality, while yet he evidently preserves not only the measure, but the characteristic spirit of the native verse. This is no slight praise. It implies talent and merit of a high order. And it may be extended-hardly, we think, in equal degree-but with very little qualification, to his various translations from various languages. He has gone from nation to nation, and collected ballads and poems of most diverse and opposite genius, and transferred them with their own peculiarities of form, feeling, and the je ne sais quoi which makes them what they are, into his own tongue; so that in reading them, we seem less to be studying a translation than perusing an original. We are not looking at what has been called the wrong side of the tapestry, but at a beautiful imitation by the hand of a master, who has so caught the nice traits of the work and wrought them into his own tissue, that, although we know the contrary, we yet can hardly persuade ourselves that they have appeared in any other previous form. There is another department which Mr. Bowring has almost appropriated to himself; and in which, although he has not reached the excellence which distinguishes some of his versions, he has yet been more successful than a great majority of those who have attempted the same walk. It is a department which is embarrassed by great and peculiar difficulties, and many have expressed the opinion that excellence in it is unattainable. undoubtedly the vast quantity of miserable rhyme which has been sent forth under the name of devotional poetry, might seem at first view to give the warrant of experience to such an opinion. Yet perhaps when the matter is fairly examined, it will be found that if the greater difficulties of the subject be considered, there is not less of good religious poetry in proportion to the whole quantity, than of any other description. If we should take into account all which might under a liberal construction be fairly called religious poetry, we think the proportion would even be greater; for we should then cite not a little from Milton, Young, Cowper, Southey, Wordsworth, whose works have not only a prevailing complexion of moral purity and religious faith, but are, in much of their essential character, directly religious and devotional. But independently of this, it must be remembered of the expressly sacred poetry, that we have the whole mass of it, good and bad, directly before our eyes, and are able to compare at a glance the quantity of the excellent with the quantity of the bad. While the immense body of poor verse on other subjects, never comes within our notice, nor is brought into comparison with the standard works which we know and admire. Thus, we know that the "Psalms and Hymns" of Watts form a large propor acter. tion of English sacred verse, and that of these, while about fifty, to speak loosely, are the finest in the language, the remainder are of very inferior merit, and many have no pretension whatever to be called poetical. We thus have a visible and painful demonstration before our eyes, that the proportion of excellent devotional poetry to the whole mass is extremely small; a demonstration made more sure, if possible, by the circumstance, that when careful selections from the whole mass are made by men of taste and industry, with a view to arranging under one cover all the best specimens which may be used in public worship, they have never been able to produce a collection sufficiently large and various, without admitting some of confessedly second-rate charHence, when there are seen at the same time volumes after volumes of what is called fine poetry on other subjects published and circulated, it is easily inferred that the sacred department exhibits an unexampled scantiness. But the comparison is not fairly made, so as to warrant this conclusion. In order to do it, we should first bring together all the poems which have been published, and set by their side the standard works, and observe how small a pile they make. Then of those standard works we should consider how large a proportion is of indifferent quality; that of such great names as Dryden the eighteen volumes dwindle down to a few short pieces, and that even of the greater Milton, there are whole books not to be numbered in the first class of the good. This will make a very considerable deduction; we may judge how great, by taking up any good selection from the poets, which professes to cull and arrange the best passages from the best writers ;-it will lead us to the same conclusion respecting poetry in general, to which we are brought respecting sacred poetry by a survey of the selections for public worship. We shall be satisfied that excellence is as rare in every other department of the muse as in this, and shall be very unwilling to take up the opinion that the highest and most interesting of topics, associated beyond all others with the intensest feelings, and exciting the imagination, are yet, merely because so sublime and familiar, unfit to be expressed in man's choicest and most charming language. It is true, that with most men both fancy and language would sink under the subject, and fall far short of its highest feelings and best conceptions. But then this is equally true of every high topic of poetry; and we believe that upon no subject whatever, however within the grasp of common minds, has gifted fancy been more entirely successful, than in the pictures of invisible things drawn by Milton and Dante, and the expressions of devout affection sometimes made by Watts, Doddridge, Cowper, Steele, and Barbauld. It is absurd with such examples of success, to pretend that religion is no field for the poet, and that devout sentiment is unsuited to the lyric muse. Incompetent authors will fail in any department. Their failure should hurt themselves only, and not bring into discredit the department in which they labored. The work of Mr. Bowring which lies before us, fully corroborates the opinion which we have here expressed. The "Matins and Vespers" are full of devotion and full of poetry. Mr. Bowring has written too much to allow every piece to be of first-rate excellence, and many parts of his volume bear marks of injudicious haste and the want of careful revision. He indulges himself also in some freedoms of verse, which seem to us rather slovenly, and although sanctioned by high authority are yet, in our view, offences against the strict propriety of poetic rule. We refer particularly to a frequent mode of constructing his lines, by which the pauses are so arranged as to conceal in a great measure the occurrence of the rhyme, and give to his rhymed stanzas the air of blank verse; as in the following examples. "Death is the gate through which we come We die-and when dissolved away, Is life, not death. What cause for fear Of death-when this same death we dread Is life continuous, and to die Is but to live immortally? Here, every, every step we tread, Is on a grave-and every breath Heaved, is a messenger of death." p. 52. "Thy sun awakes and sets-The world grows old In common fate, to perfect-and present A future, gather'd from the checquer'd past, O may I join that never-number'd throng, And sing thy praise eternal-Thou my song! pp. 58-59. Now the structure of these passages is such as belongs to blank verse; and although occasionally allowable in rhyme, as a variety and relief to its monotonous tendency, yet it cannot be carried far without serious offence against the laws which distinguish these two classes of composition from each other. It seems to have been a favorite design with some writers, to do away as far as possible the peculiarities by which rhyme is separated from blank verse, and reduce it to the same laws of unequal periods and various pauses. But it appears to us that this is a great error of judgment and taste. These are distinct classes of writing, governed by distinct laws, and constructed with different objects in view. We do not know why they should encroach on each other, or why pains should be taken to hide the distinctive features of the one, and conform it to the structure of the other. The rhyme is designed to mark out and define the rhythm, to denote the periods at which the numbers are complete, and begin again, and enable the ear to beat time to the measure as it proceeds. It is an instance of that peculiar pleasure which is naturally derived from the recurrence of similar sounds at stated intervals, and from the repetition of a given succession of notes. The pleasure of blank verse is derived from a different cause— from a succession of measured words, flowing on freely without the necessity to repeat again a given melody, or to close the sense in any defined number of feet. It is therefore far more free, varied, copious, flowing, and rhetorical, and in these respects possesses high advantages for a long poem over rhyme, which the latter cannot gain except by sacrificing its own peculiar beauties, hiding its rhyme, destroying its melody of limited rhythm, in a word, confounding itself with blank verse. To do this, is to diminish the sources of pleasure from poetical numbers, and to limit to one species what is susceptible of a vast variety. To be at the pains of constructing the different forms of verse, the eight, the six, the ten syllable, the direct, the alternate, the triple and the quadruple rhyme, and at the same time to do the utmost to conceal the flow of the stanza and keep the rhyme |