His fancy is ever on the wing; it flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry; and over all love waves his purple wings. His thoughts are as many, as restless, and as bright, as the insects that people the sun's beam. The fault of Moore is an exuberance of involuntary power. His levity becomes oppressive. He exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety cloys; his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The graceful ease with which he lends himself to all the different parts of his subject, prevents him from connecting them together as a whole. He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind does not brood over the great and permanent, but glances over the surfaces of things. His gay, laughing style, which relates to the immediate pleasures of love and wine is better than his sentimental and romantic view; for this pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or chrystallizes into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, or hardness of external imagery. He has wit at will, and of the best quality. His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best. Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Rookh, even for three thousand guineas, said Mr. Hazlitt. His fame was worth more than that. He should have minded the advice of Fadladeen. It is not, however, a failure, so much as an evasion of public opinion, and a consequent disappointment.

If Moore seems to have been too happy, continued Mr. Hazlitt, Lord Byron, from the tone of his writings, seems to have been too unhappy to be a truly great poet. He shuts himself up too much to the impenetrable gloom of his own thoughts. The Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harolde, &c. are all the same person, and they are apparently all himself. This everlasting repetition of one subject, this accumulation of horror upon horror, steels the mind against the sense of pain as much as the unceasing sweetness and luxurious monotony of Moore's poetry makes it indifferent to pleasure. There is nothing less poetical than the unbending selfishness which the poetry of Lord Byron displays. There is nothing more repulsive than this ideal absorption of all the good and ill of life in the ruling passion and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would

make itself the centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth cherishing but its intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer eating into the heart of poetry. But still there is power, and power rivets attention and forces admiration.

His genius hath a demon,' and that is the next thing to being full of the God. The range of Lord Byron's imagination is contracted, but within that range he has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses elements and agents congenial to his mind-the dark and glittering ocean-the frail bark hurrying before the storm. He gives all the tumultuous eagerness of action, and the fixed despair of thought. In vigour of style, and force of conception, he surpasses every writer of the present day. His indignant apothegms are like oracles of misanthropy. Yet he has beauty allied to his strength, tenderness sometimes blended with his despair. But the flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over the grave.

Mr. Hazlitt next spoke of Walter Scott; whose popularity he seemed to attribute to the comparative mediocrity of his talents-to his describing that which is most easily understood in a style the most easy and intelligible, and to the nature of the story which he selects. Walter Scott, said the lecturer, has great intuitive power of fancy, great vividness of pencil in placing external objects before the eye. The force of his mind is picturesque rather than moral. He conveys the distinct outlines and visible changes in outward objects, rather than their moral consequences.' He is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense passion, to Moore in delightful fancy, and to Wordsworth in profound sentiment; but he has more picturesque power than any of them. After referring to examples of this, Mr. H. observed, that it is remarkable that Mr. Westall's illustrations of Scott's poems always give one the idea of their being fac similies of the persons represented, with ancient costume, and a theatrical air. truth is, continued he, there is a modern air in the midst of the antiquarian research of Mr. Scott's poetry. It is history in masquerade. Not only the crust of old words and images is worn off, but the substance is become comparatively light and worthless. The forms are old and uncouth, but the spirit is effeminate and fashionable.

The

This, however, has been no obstacle to the success of his poetry-for he has just hit the town between the romantic and the modern, and between the two, has secured all classes of readers on his side. In a word, said Mr. Hazlitt, I conceive that he is to the great poet what an excellent mimic is to a great actor. There is no determinate impression left on the mind by reading his poetry. The reader rises from the perusal with new images and associations, but he remains the same man that he was before. The notes to his poems are just as entertaining as the poems themselves, and his poems are nothing but entertaining.

Mr. H. now proceeded to speak of Wordsworth, whom he described as the most original poet now living, and the reverse of Walter Scott in every particular, having nearly all that the other wants, and wanting all that the other possesses. His poetry is not external, but internal; he is the poet of mere sentiment. Great praise was given to many of the Lyrical Ballads, as opening a finer and deeper vein of thought and feeling than any poet in modern times has done or attempted; but it was observed, that Mr. Wordsworth's powers had been mistaken, both by the age and by himself. He cannot form a whole, said Mr. H.;-he wants the constructive faculty. He can give the fine tones of thought drawn from his mind by accident or nature, like the sounds of the Æolian harp; but he is totally deficient in all the machinery of poetry.

Mr. Hazlitt here entered at some length into the origin of what has been called the Lake School of Poetry, and endeavoured to trace it to the convulsion which was caused in the moral world by the events of the French revolution. This, and his concluding remarks on Southey and Coleridge, we omit, partly for want of room, but chiefly on account of the indefinite and personal nature of those remarks.

LAW.

Eding. Mag.

'The law's delay.'-Shakspeare. A bill was mentioned last week in the court of the vice-chancellor of England, which had been filed in the year 1719, and was reported upon by the master in 1788! The blessings of litigation appear to have been, in the

matter of this bill, most bountifully extended to the parties concerned. Lit. Pan.

HIGH TREASON.

The following fracas happened in a public-house on Tuesday afternoon:A mechanic, taking a draught of porter, was asked if he had any news, when he replied, that the only thing he had heard was the melancholy death of the physician who had attended the Princess Charlotte. A messenger, sitting with some other persons within hearing of the conversation, now bounced on the mechanic, collared him, and charged him with uttering sedition, and added that the statement was not true. The man was detained nearly two hours a prisoner. They at last relented so far as to offer him his liberty if he would give them a gill or two of whisky. The mechanic was not disposed to accept of his release on such terms, and was then escorted prisoner to the procurator-fiscal's office. Here the messenger charged the prisoner with having said that the doctor who had killed the princess had shot himself. The mechanic, therefore, was guilty of sedition. The public prosecutor, of course, made the man be forthwith released. Glas. Chr.

Anecdote of Franklin from the Letters of Dr. Lettsom.-I passed one day with Dr. Franklin at Spithead, with Sir J. Banks and the late Dr. Solander, (one of the most pleasant men I ever met with) when they went to smooth the water with oil.-Lord Loughborough was of the party. I remember there was but little conversation, except from Solander, and a laughable scene between an officer on board the ship and Dr. Franklin, on the properties of thunder and lightning. The officer continually contradicted the Doctor with saying, Sir, you are quite wrong in your opinion. Dr. Franklin says so and so; the Doctor and you are quite contrary in your ideas. I never will allow, Sir, that Dr. F. is wrong. No, Sir; I am sure he is right, and you are wrong, begging your pardon.' The Doctor never altered a feature at the conversation. All the company enjoyed a laugh except the disputants. Lit. Pan.

Modern Hermit.-Some years ago, Mr. Powyss, of Morcham near Preston, in Lancashire, England, advertised a

MACHINE TO SWEEP CHIMNIES.

Mr. C. Carr, of Paddington, has constructed a machine to sweep chimnies, which appears to possess great advantages. It is complete of itself, requiring no chain, pulley, or other appendage in the chimney, and will sweep very clean as well in horizontal as perpendicular flues. If the flue be angular, having one or more bends, the person who uses it can ascertain the direction in which the angle goes off, and can turn the head of the instrument the proper way. There is a means also of ascertaining when the head of the instrument has reached the top of the chimney, so that no danger of thrusting off the iron smoke cowls is incurred It works in a very cleanly manner entirely from below, and can easily be made fire proof

when necessary.

Ibid.

AGRICULTURE.

Tempus in agrorum cultu consumere dulce est,'

In rural economy, the objects that might be converted to profitable account, are inconceivably numerous and still but imperfectly known, for instance, the blood of the cow is an excellent manure for fruit trees. It also forms the basis of Prussian blue.

To rid a garden of Caterpillars.— Taking the advantage of a rainy morning, while the leaves are wet, sprinkle them, especially the under parts, and young shoots, with fine sand. The caterpillars, entangled in the sand, will drop off in apparent agony, and will not return.

great quantities, by re-setting the Early potatoes may be produced in plants, after taking off the ripe and large ones. A gentleman at Dumfries has replanted them six different times this season, without any additional maquantity, he gets a larger crop of ripe nure, and instead of a falling off in His plants have still on them three disones at every raising than the former. tinct crops, and he supposes they may continue to vegetate and germinate until they are stopped by the frost. By these means, he has a new crop every eight days, and has had the same for six weeks past.

Eighth Lecture of Mr. Hazlitt on the living Poets of Great Britain, delivered at the Surry Institution, London.

Mr. Hazlitt commenced this lecture with some remarks on the nature of true fame, which he described as not popularity-the shout of the multitude -the idle buzz of fashion-the flattery of favour or of friendship,-but the spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men. Fame is not the recompense of the living, but of the dead. The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of those to whom the incense is offered. He who has ears truly touched to the music of fame, is in a manner deaf to the voice of popularity. The love of fame differs from vanity in this, that the one is immediate and personal, the other ideal and abstracted. The lover of true fame does not delight in that gross homage which is paid to himself, but in that pure homage which is paid to the eternal forms of truth and beauty, as they are reflected in his mind. He waits patiently and calmly for the award of posterity, without endeavouring to forestall his immortality, or mortgage it for a newspaper puff. The love of fame should be, in reality, only another name for the love of excellence. Those who are the most entitled to fame, are always the most content to wait for it; for they know that, if they have deserved it, it will not be withheld from them. It is the award of successive generations that they value and desire; for the brightest living reputation cannot be equally imposing to the imagination with that which is covered and rendered venerable by the hoar of innumerable ages. After further remarks to this effect, and a few words on the female writers of the day, Mr. Hazlitt proceeded to speak of the living poets. He began with Mr. Rogers, whom he described as a very lady-like poet-as an elegant but feeble writer, who wraps up obvious thoughts in a cover of fine words-who is full of enigmas with no meaning to them. His poetry is a more minute and inoffensive species of the Della Cruscan. There is nothing like truth of nature, or simplicity of expression. You cannot see the thought for the ambiguity of the expression the figure for the finery-the picture

for the varnish. As an example of this, Mr. H. referred to the description of a friend's ice-house, in which Mr. Rogers has carried the principle of elegant evasion and delicate insinuation of his meaning so far, that the Monthly Reviewers mistook his friend's ice-house for a dog-kennel, and the monster which was emphatically said to be chained up in it for a large mastiff dog.

Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, the lecturer described as of the same class with the poetry of the foregoing author. There is a painful attention paid to the expression, in proportion as there is little to express, and the decomposition of prose is mistaken for the composition of poetry. The sense and keeping in the ideas is sacrificed to a jingle of words and an epigrammatic form of expression. The verses on the Battle of Hohenlinden, Mr. H. described as possessing considerable spirit and animation; but he spoke of the Gertrude of Wyoming as exhibiting little power, or power suppressed by extreme fastidiousness. The author seems so afraid of doing wrong, that he does little or nothing. Lest he should wander from the right path, he stands still. He is like a man whose heart fails him just as he is going up in a balloon, and who breaks his neck by flinging himself out when it is too late. He mangles and maims his ideas before they are fullformed, in order to fit them to the Procrustes' bed of criticism; or strangles his intellectual offspring in the birth, lest they should come to an untimely end in the Edinburgh Review. No wri ter, said Mr. Hazlitt, who thinks habitually of the critics, either to fear or contemn them, can ever write well. It is the business of reviewers to watch poets, not poets to watch reviewers. Mr. H. concluded his remarks on Campbell by censuring the plot of Gertrude of Wyoming, on account of the mechanical nature of its structure, and from the most striking incidents all occurring in the shape of antitheses. They happen just in the nick of time, but without any known cause, except the convenience of the author.

Moore was described as a poet of quite a different stamp,-as heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, reserved, and parsimonious. Mr. Moore's muse was compared to Ariel-as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a spirit

His fancy is ever on the wing; it flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry; and over all love waves his purple wings. His thoughts are as many, as restless, and as bright, as the insects that people the sun's beam. The fault of Moore is an exuberance of involuntary power. His levity becomes oppressive. He exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety cloys; his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The graceful ease with which he lends himself to all the different parts of his subject, prevents him from connecting them together as a whole. He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind does not brood over the great and permanent, but glances over the surfaces of things. His gay, laughing style, which relates to the immediate pleasures of love and wine is better than his sentimental and romantic view; for this pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or chrystallizes into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, or hardness of external imagery. He has wit at will, and of the best quality. His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best. Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Rookh, even for three thousand guineas, said Mr. Hazlitt. His fame was worth more than that. He should have minded the advice of Fadladeen. It is not, however, a failure, so much as an evasion of public opinion, and a consequent disappointment.

If Moore seems to have been too happy, continued Mr. Hazlitt, Lord Byron, from the tone of his writings, seems to have been too unhappy to be a truly great poet. He shuts himself up too much to the impenetrable gloom of his own thoughts. The Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harolde, &c. are all the same person, and they are apparently all himself. This everlasting repetition of one subject, this accumulation of horror upon horror, steels the mind against the sense of pain as much as the unceasing sweetness and luxurious monotony of Moore's poetry makes it indifferent to pleasure. There is nothing less poetical than the unbending selfishness which the poetry of Lord Byron displays. There is nothing more repulsive than this ideal absorption of all the good and ill of life in the ruling passion and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would

make itself the centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth cherishing but its intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer eating into the heart of poetry. But still there is power, and power rivets attention and forces admiration.

His genius hath a demon,' and that is the next thing to being full of the God. The range of Lord Byron's imagination is contracted, but within that range he has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses elements and agents congenial to his mind-the dark and glittering ocean-the frail bark hurrying before the storm. He gives all the tumultuous eagerness of action, and the fixed despair of thought. In vigour of style, and force of conception, he surpasses every writer of the present day. His indignant apothegms are like oracles of misanthropy. Yet he has beauty allied to his strength, tenderness sometimes blended with his despair. But the flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over the grave.

Mr. Hazlitt next spoke of Walter Scott; whose popularity he seemed to attribute to the comparative mediocrity of his talents-to his describing that which is most easily understood in a style the most easy and intelligible, and to the nature of the story which he selects. Walter Scott, said the lecturer, has great intuitive power of fancy, great vividness of pencil in placing external objects before the eye. The force of his mind is picturesque rather than moral. He conveys the distinct outlines and visible changes in outward objects, rather than their moral consequences.' He is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense passion, to Moore in delightful fancy, and to Wordsworth in profound sentiment; but he has more picturesque power than any of them. After referring to examples of this, Mr. H. observed, that it is remarkable that Mr. Westall's illustrations of Scott's poems always give one the idea of their being fac similies of the persons represented, with ancient costume, and a theatrical air. The truth is, continued he, there is a modern air in the midst of the antiquarian research of Mr. Scott's poetry. It is history in masquerade. Not only the crust of old words and images is worn off, but the substance is become comparatively light and worthless. The forms are old and uncouth, but the spirit is effeminate and fashionable.