"ter to sin against truth than beauty," so long as the sense is not perverted, and nature is not outraged by inappropriate epithets, which must always injure the distinctness of imagery and landscape.

If, in the preceding instance, Cowper's moonlight is chaster than Pope's, see how much more grandly the rhyme translation gives the remaining lines of that closing passage:

So numerous seem'd those fires, the bank between

Of Zanthus, blazing, and the fleet of Greece,

In prospect all of Troy; a thousand fires

Each watch'd by fifty warriors, seated near.
The steeds beside the chariot stood, their corn
Chewing, and waiting till the golden-thron'd

Aurora should restore the light of day.

COWPER'S HOMER, first edition.

Nothing can be more confused and unhappy than the language of this passage. It is left doubtful whether it is the fires that are blazing, or the river that by reflection blazes; and, "the bank between," is strange language for "between the banks." Chewing seems below the dignity of heroic verse, and the compound epithet golden-thron'd, fine in itself, is ruined as to effect, by closing the line when its substantive begins the next. Observe

how exempt from all these faults is Pope's translation of the same paragraph.

So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,

And lighten glimmering Zanthus with their rays.

The long reflection of the distant fires

Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires.

A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,

And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field.

Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,

Whose umber'd arms, by fits thick flashes send.

Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,

And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.

Poetry has no picture more exquisite than we meet in the second, third, and fourth lines; but an infinite number, equally vivid and beautiful, rise to the reader's eye, as it explores the pages of Doctor Darwin's Botanic Garden.

While the powers of metrical landscape-painting are the theme, not unwelcome to those who feel its inchantment, will be instances which must prove that they are possessed by Mr. John Gisborne in a degree which would disgrace the national taste if they should be suffered to pass away without their fame. "The Vales of Weaver" is

this

young man's first publication. Beneath thank

less neglect, the efflorescence of a rich imagination will probably sink blighted, like the opening flowers of the spring before an eastern mildew, no more to rise in future compositions to the view of that public which had estimated so coldly the value of the first.

We have read various descriptions of a winter's night, and its ensuing morning; but the following sketch is not borrowed from any of them. We feel that it was drawn beneath a lively remembrance of real impression made on the author's mind by the circumstances themselves: therefore it will not fail to touch the vibrating chords of recollected sensation in every reader of sensibility. Book-made descriptions are trite and vapid; but nature is inexhaustible in her varieties, and will always present to the eye of genius either new images, or such combination of images as must render them new; and they will rise on his page in the morning freshness of originality. These sacred arcana she reserves for the poet, and leaves the mere versifier to his dull thefts.

VALES OF WEAVER.

O Wootton! oft I love to hear

Thy wintry whirlwinds, loud and clear;

With dreadful pleasure bid them fill |
My listening ear, my bosom chill.

As the sonorous North assails

Weaver's bleak wilds, and leafless vales,
With awful majesty of might

He bursts the billowy clouds of night;
Booms* the resounding glens among,
And roaring rolls his snows along.
In clouds against my groaning sash
Broad, feathery flakes incessant dash,
Or wheel below, and mingling form
The frolic pageants of the storm.
Hark! with what aggravated roar
Echo repeats her midnight lore;
Rends her dark solitudes and caves,

And bellowing shakes the mighty gravest.

Couch'd on her seat the timid hare
Listens each boisterous sweep of air;
Or peeps yon blasted furze between,
the snow-bewildered scene;
Instant retracts her shuddering head,

And eyes

And nestles closer in her bed.

All sad and ruffled, in the grove

The fieldfare wakes from dreams of love;

Hears the loud north and sleety snow,

And views the drifted brakes below;

Swift to her wing returns her beak,

And shivers as the tempests break.

* A word admirably expressing the noise of winds, and applied to

it here for the first time in poetry.

†The numerous tumuli on Weaver and the adjacent hills.

Up starts the village-dog aloof,

And howls beneath his rifted roof;

Looks from his den, and blinking hears
The driving tumult at his ears!

Instant withdraws his fearful breast,

Shrinks from the storm, and steals to rest.

So* shrinks the pining fold, and sleeps
Beneath the valley's vaulted deeps;

Or crops the fescue's dewy blade,
And treads unseen the milky glade;
Forms by its breath fair opening bowers,
Transparent domes, and pearly showers.

Thus night rolls on till orient dawn
Unbars the purple gates of morn,
Unfolds each vale and snow-clad grove,
Mute founts and glossy banks above.

Thin streaky clouds, convex'd by storms,
Slowly expand their tissued forms;

* So shrinks the pining fold.] It often happens that sheep in this and in the Peak country, are immersed many feet deep in snow for several days before they are discovered. The perpetual steam from their nostrils keeps the snow, immediately over their heads, in a dissolving state, and hence a tunnel is constantly forming through the heaps above. This tunnel greatly facilitates their discovery, and supplies them with abundance of fresh air. The warmth of these animals soon dissolves the surrounding snow, and at length the drift is so completely vaulted, that they are able to stretch their limbs, and search for subsistence. It is asserted that sheep have been frequently found alive after having been entombed in the snow during a fortnight.