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"Hear, Oye sons of Time! the powers of life
Arrest the elements, and stay their strife;
From wandering atoms, ethers, airs, and gas,
By combination form the organic mass;
And, as
-as they seize, digest, secrete,-dispense
The bliss of being to the vital ens.

Hence in bright groups from Irritation rise
Young Pleasure's trains, and roll their azure eyes.

"With fond delight we feel the potent charm,
When Zephyrs cool us, or when sun-beams warm ;
With fond delight inhale the fragrant flowers,
Taste the sweet fruits, which bend the blushing bowers
Admire the music of the vernal grove,

Or drink the raptures of delirious love.

"So with long gaze admiring eyes behold
The varied landscape all its lights unfold;
Huge rocks opposing o'er the stream project
Their naked bosoms, and the beams reflect;
Wave high in air their fringed crests of wood,
And checker'd shadows dance upon the flood;
Green sloping lawns construct the sidelong scene,
And guide the sparkling rill that winds between;
Conduct on murmuring wings the pausing gale,
And rural echoes talk along the vale;

Dim hills behind in pomp aerial rise,

Lift their blue tops, and melt into the skies.' r. 141.

The sources of pleasure are extended to an almost infinite variety of other phænomena, through which we cannot pursue the poet. Soon, however, we are told

"Soon the fair forms with vital being bless'd,
Time's feeble children, lose the boon possess'd;
The goaded fibre ceases to obey,

And sense deserts the uncontractile clay;
While births unnumber'd, ere the parents die,
The hourly waste of lovely life supply;
And thus, alternating with death, fulfil
The silent mandates of the Almighty will;
Whose hand unseen the works of nature dooms
By laws unknown-who gives, and who resumes.

"Each pregnant oak ten thousand acorns forms
Profusely scatter'd by autumnal storms;
Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy sheds
Profusely scatter'd from its waving heads;
The countless aphides, prolific tribe,
With greedy trunks the honey'd sap imbibe;
Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big,
And pendent nations tenant every twig.
Amorous with double sex, the snail and worm,
Scoop'd in the soil, their cradling caverns form;

Heap their white eggs, secure from frost and floods
And crowd their nurseries with uncounted broods.
Ere yet with wavy tail the tadpole swims,

Breathes with new lungs, or tries his nascent limbs
Her countless shoals the amphibious frog forsakes,
And living islands float upon the lakes.

The migrant herring steers her myriad bands
From seas of ice to visit warmer strands;
Unfathom'd depths and climes unknown explores,
And covers with her spawn unmeasured shores.
-All these, increasing by successive birth,
Would each o'erpeople ocean, air, and earth.

"So human progenies, if unrestrain❜d,
By climate friended, and by food sustain'd,
O'er seas and soils, prolific hordes! would spread
Erelong, and deluge their terraqueous bed:
But war, and pestilence, disease, and dearth,
Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth.
Thus while new forms reviving tribes acquire
Each passing moment, as the old expire;
Like insects swarming in the noontide bower,
Rise into being, and exist an hour;

The births and deaths contend with equal strife,
And every pore of Nature teems with life;
Which buds or breathes from Indus to the poles,
And earth's vast surface kindles, as it rolls!

"Hence when a monarch or a mushroom dies,
Awhile extinct the organic matter lies;
But, as a few short hours or years revolve,
Alchemic powers the changing mass dissolve;
Born to new life unnumber'd insects pant,
New buds surround the microscopic plant;
Whose embryon senses, and unwearied frames,
Feel finer goads, and blush with purer flames;
Renascent joys from irritation spring,

Stretch the long root, or wave the aurelian wing.
"When thus a squadron or an army yields,
And festering carnage loads the waves or fields;
When few from famines or from plagues survive,
Or earthquakes swallow half a realm alive ;-
While Nature sinks in Time's destructive storms,
The wrecks of Death are but a change of forms;
Emerging matter from the grave returns,
Feels new desires, with new sensations burns;
With youth's first bloom a finer sense acquires,
And Loves and Pleasures fan the rising fires.-
Thus sainted Paul, 'O Death!' exulting cries,
Where is thy sting? O grave! thy victories?'

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Such is our author's new commentary upon St. Paul-who is just about as much indebted to him as Moses is, for his illus

ation of the mode by which was created the first mother of mankind in the garden of Eden and such are the sublime comforts afforded by modern philosophy!! Dr. Darwin teaches, indeed, the doctrines of a future state, of future happiness, and immortality: but his future state is that of the future existence of man in the form of worms or maggots-his future happiness, that which is propagated to these or other animalcules by the new acquisition of life, and which they, in return, propagate to another order of beings upon their destruction-and his immortality is the perpetual reproduction of life, which hence ensues in some shape or another.

"Immortal Happiness from realms deceased
Wakes, as from sleep, unlessen'd or increased
Calls to the wise in accents loud and clear,
Sooths with sweet tones the sympathetic ear;
Informs and fires the revivescent clay,

;

And lights the dawn of life's returning day.' P. 162.

Upon this passage we have the following note.

The sum total of the happiness of organized nature is probably increased rather than diminished, when one large old animal dies, and is converted into many thousand young ones; which are produced or supported with their numerous progeny by the same organic matter. Linnæus asserts, that three of the flies, called musca vomitoria, will consume the body of a dead horse, as soon as a lion can; Syst. Nat.' P. 162.

Of other immortality, futurity, or future happiness, we hear not a syllable. Finally, Urania, the bard's celestial instructress, approaches the altar of the Goddess of Nature, and there pays her homage to Truth divine: and with this ad of religion the poem concludes.

'Slow to the altar fair Urania bends

Her graceful march, the sacred steps ascends,
High in the midst with blazing censer stands,
And scatters incense with illumined hands:
Thrice to the goddess bows with solemn pause,
With trembling awe the mystic veil withdraws,
And, meekly kneeling on the gorgeous shrine,
Lifts her ecstatic eyes to Truth divine!' P. 170.

Such is the poem before us, composed with an elaborate polish of diction, a curious felicity in the introduction of technical terms, and in an appeal to many of the most recondite arcana of nature; and occasionally with an exquisite boldness of imagination, and accuracy of taste. Beyond this, however, we have but little to add in its praise. Its versification, its vocabulary, its images, are all alike confined and unvaried, wearying us with their monotony of recurrence and perpetuity of

pomp, and in very few instances offering any thing which we have not already met with in our author's Botanic Garden. It is a gallery of little gaudy pictures, in which the artist is a continual mannerist, and for ever copying from himself. It is deficient in interest, from a want of general connexion, and, what might easily have been added, the casual introduction of impressive episodes. But its grand fault is its unrestrained and constant tendency to subvert the first principles and most important precepts of revelation, and to substitute the religion of nature for the religion of the Bible.

To the poem are appended a variety of additional notes, in illustration of the doctrines it inculcates; many of which indeed, from their length and arrangement, are less entitled to the ap pellation of notes, than essays. The same penetrative genius, the same wildness of fancy, and occasional felicity of conjecture, are here as obvious as in the poem. The longest are on sponta neous vitality; the chemical theory of electricity and magnetism, including the science of Galvani; the analysis of taste; and the theory and structure of language. From these, we regret that our limits will not allow us to make any extract. They may certainly be perused with much entertainment, and no small degree of instruction.

ART. V.-The Three Brothers: a Romance.
Pickersgill, Jun. Esq.
Stockdale. 1803.

By Joshua

4 Vols. 12mo. 11. Boards.

THE author, by denominating the present work a romance, intends, perhaps, to escape regular criticism, as the practice of such writers warrants every vagrant irregularity, justifies every breach of probability; and, with the wild enthusiasm of true poetry without its ornaments, overleaps time and space, divine and natural laws. A species of writing has lately appeared, uniting apparently romantic incidents with the genuine novel, which may be styled the humbler, and sometimes the comic, epic, of which the Ethiopic History of Heliodorus is one of the earliest specimens. We had lately occasion to notice a work of this kind-the Monk of Madrid: but it did not appear of sufficient importance to lead us into any disquisition on this new attempt. The Mysteries of Udolpho was one of the most pleasing specimens of this union; and its predecessor, the Romance of the Forest, led the way to the mixture, by blending some portion of the marvellous, though not of the more impres sively terrifying species, with the softer beauties of the humble epic-the novel.

In the genuine novel, we expect a natural but amusing series of transactions, rising in their singularity above the most com

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mon incidents of life, and, in the language, above colloquial meanness; characters of which the outline may be hinted at, but which must describe themselves by the adventures in which they are engaged; and these may be singular and comic, or, with more dignity, be represented as examples of virtue and religion, of delicacy, honour, and propriety. Something is expected that may attract by amusement, something that may instruct by example. To keep up attention, the story must be artfully involved; and, to gratify the mind in attention thus suspended, the catastrophe must be clear, unexpected, and satisfactory, as when Bellario discovers all.' Smollett's novels are narratives, without any artful involution; and their merit consists in raising distress, which is relieved by easy and natural means. Fielding's Tom Jones is an instance of a story involved with peculiar skill, and unraveled with singular felicity. Miss Burney's novels sometimes fail in the catastrophe, which is often abrupt, and occasionally a little obscure. Mrs. Smith is frequently happy in her conclusions; but, as the distress is not greatly heightened, the relief is not felt with proportional satisfaction.

The historic novel, as generally conducted, fills up the space which the dignity of history deigns not to record, and imagines adventures suitable to the general character of the hero, when placed in the more private scenes of life. Authors who wish to secure applause, sometimes mix the two last species with the romance; and, by heightening traits of nature with the irregular wildness of the Italian or the terrors of the German school, produce a mixture like Gay's What d'ye call it?' which is tragedy, comedy, and farce, while it attains the merit of neither species singly.

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Of the terrific romance, we have lately had a singular specimen in the Monk, which, until the appearance of the present volumes, has had neither follower nor imitator. If it be an error to copy a faulty model, our author is undoubtedly wrong: if it display somewhat worse than a false taste to imitate the more exceptionable parts, his error is still greater;-for of each Mr. Pickersgill may, we think, be convicted.

We have not introduced the former remarks on the conduct of these humbler epics, without meaning to apply them to the present work. The author may refuse to plead to the indictment, by referring to his title; but the words novel and romance are generally supposed synonymous, and used promiseuously. As a novel, this romance' gains admittance to the circulating library, the parlour-window, and the toilet: as a novel, then, it must be examined.

One great source of the pleasure both in the greater and the comic epic consists in the artful concealment of the event, and CRIT. REV. Vol. 39, October, 1893.

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