acter." p. 27. "They confine the seat and habitation of faith, the bounds of its existence, and the sphere of its influence, to the sensations, within whose gaseous atmosphere they circumscribe its power, and to whose invisible operations they restrict its evidence." p. 120. "They confine the agency of grace within the volatile gas of the sensations, &c." p. 191. Now all this is downright poetry and unless we labour under a great mistake, we are able by means of internal evidence to state from what source these splendid visions were derived. Who has not been at the Royal Institution, and who can be ignorant then of the effects of that gas, which all must have tasted? If perchance any of our country readers should have yet to learn the in. toxicating properties of the nitrous oxide gas, he should be informed that it possesses virtues, which not even Falstaff himself could ever discover in Sherris Sack. "It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours, which environ it: makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and delectable shapes." These properties it has in common with sack; in other respects it resembles the wonderworking afflatus of the Pythian god it carries you at once far beyond the confines of sobriety and reason; you see wonderful sights, and say wonderful things; you rave about the delirium of the senses, the volatile gas of the sensations, and spheres, and atmospheres, and invisible operations, and can speak no language but the lan. guage of empyrean poetry. One . proof more would be sufficient to establish even a mathematical proposition: "The fanatic," says the author of Religion without Cant, puts the victims of his rage to every torture, which he can contrive in this world, and then breathes fervent wishes to heaven for their eternal dam nation in the next." p. 130. This it must be allowed is highly po. etical; as bold a flight of the imagination as we ever remem. ber. We trust that, by this time, our readers are equally persuaded with ourselves, that Mr. Fellowes, notwithstanding his mod. est disavowal of such an opinion, has already appeared before the public in the character of a po et. The volume at present under examination, we have affirm. ed, to consist not of poems, but essays "on love, morally, phi losophically, and practically considered." This will abun dantly appear from a review of the work. 66 In the second sentence of the advertisement, we are informed, that many of the pieces in this little volume," are either "trans lated or imitated from a German writer of the greatest celebrity; who perhaps was never equalled in the simplicity, the richness, and the delicacy of his pastoral compositions." That writer is Gesner. Now all this may be extremely correct: but unless the spirit of Gesner has fired the bosom of his translator, what advantage do we gain by this piece of intelligence? There lived once upon a time a Roman author called Virgil, who in the opinion of some persons was perhaps never equalled in the simplicity, the richness, and the delicacy of his pastoral compositions," except indeed by this German Gesner; but with how few of these good things has Dr. Trappe condescended to favor us? A bottle of good champagne possesses a briskness and a sparkling, which no small beer in the world could ever pretend to rival: yet if it be slowly translated from one vessel into another, we need not in. form a writer who dates his advertisement from *Euston, that though the body of the liquor may remain, all the spirit and sparkling have escaped in the process. Of the richness and delicacy of these essays we are not prepared to speak; it cannot however be denied that they are abundantly simple; and we feel pleasure in making this concession, on account of its conform. lity to the rule of Horace. "Sit quidvis simplex duntaxat et unum.” Aristotle says something about poems having a beginning, a middle, and an end, and contends that they ought not to be too large or too small, but of such moderate dimensions that you may contemplate the whole at once. It cannot be denied that all these essays have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and you may generally take in the whole at one view they usually begin at the top of the page, and end at the bottom; and with respect to unity of design, we have only to add, that the beginning is salntation, the middle is salutation, and the end is salutation. † *The seat of the Duke of Grafton. Salutation is a long word, and consequently not well adapted to a short composition. It is on this ground we suppose that Mr. Fellowes has generally 1. To Anna. 2. The Praise of Love. 3. Virtuous Love. 11. Hopeless Love. 12. The Sensations of Insipient Love. 14. Amintor or Filial Love. 16. Anna consecrated to Love. 19. Soon to be married. 20. Frederick and Lucy, or Frolic Love. 22. Arthur and Mabel. 26. Lovers parting, &c. &c. The first of these essays is ad. dressed to Anna; and as it states the object of the author in a plain and familiar manner, and is placed in the very front of his book, it may be considered as no unfair specimen of his best attempts. "No bloody battles stain my page; ways; These lines, with the exception of the fourth, are pretty near sense, and as first impressions are powerful, we are happy to introduce Mr. Fellowes to our readers with so favorable an extract. Our next specimen is from the second essay on the "Praises of Love." adopted in place of it an expressive monPiozzi's Synonymes. osyllable, which he probably found in 'O Cupid! god of ecstacy, How sweet to love, and lov'd to be !" This is simple and artless enough. So simple indeed and so artless, that we shall leave those to enjoy it who can, without a comment. To disturb Mr. Fellowes or his readers in the possession of such simple pleasures would be as cruel as to scare his Own rosy child" from plucking daisies. 66 The third essay is entitled, "Virtuous Love," and thus it commences : "The virtuous, when the virtuous love, We must pause a moment to remark on one obvious beauty in these philosophical speculations on "Virtuous Love." A sturdy grammarian, who never can endure a nominative case without a verb in the neighborhood, would probably start at the passage, as containing a violation of one of the first principles of his art. But Mr. Fellowes writes not for philologists. His aim is to gratify minds of a nobler kind; and every man of taste is well aware, that what is invidiously called "bad grammar," ," is not only defensible from the practice of the best writers, both ancient and modern, but that a deviation from ordinary rules is, in certain cases an evidence of superior intellect and transcendent ability. "Great wits will sometimes gloriously offend, And rise to faults true critics dare not mend.' So spake Pope, and so writes Mr. Fellowes. Had he not risen in the present instance far above the influence of Lilly and of Lowth, 'To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,' this stanza would have lost one of its principal beauties. "A grace" of the same nature occurs in his next composition, "Anna recommended to the care of the Zephyrs ;" 'But O! thou softest of the zephyr. train, Thou, who ne'er flew upon the ruffled main, &c. (p. 10.) "Contracta quis non in pau. pertate solutus ?" If a man who has neither ideas or language is still willing to write, he ought in pity to be allowed some lati. tude. It has been remarked of many persons, possessed of pre-emi. nent talents, from Demosthenes down to Mr. Fox, that they were sometimes so hurried on by the subjects, which occupied the full grasp and bent of their mighty minds, that they were betrayed into inaccuracies, which a man even of vulgar conception would easily avoid. The public will be much gratified with observing several of these marks of genius in the work before us. We shall content ourselves with producing two luminous instances. 'WALK AT MIDNIGHT IN THE AISLE OF A CATHEDRAL' 'How well this gloom accords with my sad heart! The night-bird twitters* from the grey church-pile, As slow I roam along the midnight aisle; At lonely intervals the moon beams dart, Shedding a soft endearing smile on those, * Buffon takes no notice of a twittering owl The twittering species we presume is peculiar to Suffolk. In consecrated peace, 'neath the dark cell, Freed from this frail mortality, who dwell.' (p. 16.) A poor uninformed man, who looks no farther than his Sunday lesson, or the solemn language of the burial service, would probably imagine that the bodies alone are committed to the dust, and that the soul had taken its departure for the world of spirits; if Mr. Fellowes has deposited them both "neath the" same "dark cell," it must be attributed solely to the rapidity of his thoughts and the boldness of his ideas. Again, "Whose is that haggard look and frantic air, Up yon rude cliff that winds the weary way In the deep night, and shuns the glare of day? Tis hopeless love, the victim of despair!' (p. 18.) To make short of a melanholly tale, hopeless love" tumbles from a cliff and drowns herself. This essay reminds us of a rule once laid down for conversation and essays by a gentleman of distinguished eloquence: "Never deal in particulars, always lay hold of something general; and if possible seize an abstract prineiple; it invariably excites attention." Indeed it does. We are unwilling to trespass too long upon the patience of our readers, by selecting farther marks of genius from this vol. ume; but we must be permitted, in justice to the author, to give his account of "the sensations of insipient love." We at first doubted whether the word should not be read incipient ;" but were convinced, by the perusal, how totally such a correction would destroy the spirit and beauty of the piece. He who would do a thing well, should do it naturally. Mr. Fellowes had occasion to paint the sensations of a foolish lover, (possibly the idiot child of Betty Foy so charmingly described in the "Lyrical Ballads ;") he imme. diately transforms himself, according to the rules of Longinus, into the person of the unhappy youth, and exhibits his sensations in terms highly beautiful on account of their natural insipience. 'O why these unusual emotions I feel? Why flutters my heart? from my breast soft sighs steal? Why from thee are my eyes so unwilling to stray? Or, why so dejected, when you are away? Unless you're by my side, my mind's nev er at ease, No female besides has one charm that can please!' Ah! I love thee--that's it' (how sweetly insipient!) if, of love I may tell, O how blest should I be did you love me as well! Tis true that my eyes thy eyes often will meet, When sudden, as if half asham'd, they re treat. A suffusion of red then will just tint thy cheek, &c.' Delightfully insipient again! One may read for a summer's day without once hazarding the discovery, whose eyes are ashamed, and whose eyes retreat. We will give but one specimen more of Mr. Fellowes' style of reasoning. The last essay is in two parts, entitled, "The First Seaman, or Love teaching the Art of Navigation." A mother and her daughter are living on a solitary island, which for the sake of perspicuity we will call A just in sight of it is a distant land B. in the horizon the daughter wishes for the society of some other beings like herself, though perfectly ignorant of their existence, and therefore falls violently in love with a possible inhabitant of B. A young man resident in Bhaving heard from his father that a family once lived in the direction of A, before an earthquake separated the two countries, is smitten in his turn with the possible inhabi. tant of that island: he can scarce, ly sleep for the idea, and of course dreams about his imagin. ary fair. The great excellence of this young man consists in the strength of his body and the strength of his understanding. A tree's huge trunk, which had for ages stood Hallow'd by time, came rolling o'er the flood. (p. 121.) : He seized it alone, and drew it on the beach so much for the vigor of his body. The following reasoning proves the strength of his understanding. That on yon isle some human footsteps tread, Is probable from what my father said; And the bright dream, which powers celestial drew Before my fancy, prove that saying true. (p. 124.) To a cold logician this might probably appear an argument not very decisive; but the truth of the fact is the best proof that the reasoning is correct. A young lady did live in the island A, and her name was "Ella." The se quel may be left to our readers imagination. We have already stated our reasons, why we cannot rank these compositions in the class of poetical effusions. Our quotations must have proved to the satisfaction of most of our readers, that they ought rather to be entitled, "Essays on Love, morally, philosophically, and practically considered." But degustibus non disputandum :" every man must be left to his own judgment in the estimation. "It is surely superfluous to answer the question, that has once been asked," says the Colossus of English literature," whether Pope was a Poet, otherwise than by asking in return, if Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found?" We are bold to answer, in this last work of Mr. Fel lowes for whatever the verses of Mr. Pope are not, precisely that thing the verses of Mr. Fel. lowes are. Pope remarks of himself, 'I lisp'd in numbers for the numbers came; and this constitutes the difference between them. Mr. Fellowes attempts to lisp in numbers, but the numbers will not come. As for example, A bubbling brook with murmurs sweet Soon lull'd him in the arms of sleep.' The number, which should have come, was 46 sheet ;" but it is unfortunate that we always speak of "sheets" in the plural. In the poetry of prose, he has, as we have seen been eminently successful. Few works are calculated to excite general attention: we will however venture to recommend these essays to four classes of readers, so numerous and extensive, that if only each procures one, the sale will certainly rec om npense all the trouble, and dif. ficulty, and vexation, which the author must have experienced in reducing a set of awkward and unaccommodating words to order and decorum. And first to school boys. Whoever has been concerned in the mysteries of theme-making, |