bit of peculation, the charge seems to
have been unjust, and there really is
no evidence at all that he ever acted
upon his fat friend's advice to "rob
the Exchequer."
As far as it goes,
this is all well enough; but Mr. Tyler
pushes the value of this description of
evidence very far beyond the worth
usually ascribed to it. Equally com-
plaisant is he to the little positive tes-
timony he is able to adduce. Some
letters of Hotspur's, in which the
Prince, then a boy of thirteen, is men-
tioned in the way in which it is
usual to speak of royal youths, are
liberally considered as conclusive proof
of his valour and kind-heartedness;
a despatch in the prince's name ad-
dressed to the Council, and detailing
the savage barbarities practised upon
the estates of Owen Glendower by
troops nominally under the command
of the Prince, then a boy of fourteen,
is adjudged to breathe the spirit of a
gallant young warrior full of promp-
titude and intrepidity; his filial duti-
fulness and affection, as well as his
pious and devout trust in Providence,
are held to be established by some re-
ligious phrases in two or three letters
written at the age of seventeen; whilst
his humanity rests upon the unques-
tionable fact of his abstaining from
sending to his father a prisoner who
was so badly wounded that he could
not mount a horse; moreover all his
virtues are vouched for in the pre-
amble of the Act of Parliament by
which he was declared heir apparent;
and Lydgate assures us, that

-" he hathe joy and great dainty
To read in books of antiquity
To find only virtue,"

and that "he is both manful and virtuous;" and Occleve, when anxious to obtain his favour, describes him as "benign and demure to sue unto,' with a "heart full-applied to grant." Upon the strength of these various testimonies, and one or two others of less moment, and upon the ground, also, that no contemporary historian has handed down to us any definite act of profligacy or licentiousness, Mr. Tyler rests satisfied that Henry was a young gentleman of the Sir Charles Grandison school from his birth"an undaunted warrior and triumphant hero... the conqueror of him

self, the example of a chastened modest spirit, of filial reverence, and a single mind bent upon duty A combination of moral excellencies . . . a sincere and pious Christian." (Vol. I. p. 223-4.)

The reply of the historians lies in a nutshell. Mr. Tyler may amuse himself by the discovery of anachronisms in Shakspeare-the glory of the Bard's reputation is rather heightened than sullied by proof that his imagination outstripped the facts on which his enchanting plays upon the History of Henry the Fourth were founded; but as to History, which is Truth, what has she to do with the inventions of the dramatist? - Nothing but to admire them for their singular resemblance to what she herself might have been.

The fact that Henry in his youthful days was "addicted to courses vain," from which he suddenly withdrew upon his accession to the throne, is vouched for by a body of historians of his own days, and of the period immediately subsequent, so numerous, that, as Mr. Turner properly remarks, "the fact cannot justly be questioned without doubting all history." Mr. Tyler proffers some very unsatisfactory criticism upon Walsingham's assertions, and endeavours also to combat those of Hall. But, if Walsingham were got rid of, the fact still remains in the pages of Thomas of Elmham, and Titus Livius, and Otterbourn, and Hardyng. And why take the trouble of combating Hall, who, in that part of his Chronicle, is merely a translator and amplifier of Polydore Vergil, who states the fact clearly enough, and so do others. None of then, indeed, enter into particulars, but they have told us with what descriptions of persons the Prince passed his days in wanton living;" and, when we consider the time at which they wrote, was it to be expected that they should have gone on to particularise the facts of libertinism which constituted "wanton living?" or shall we doubt that Prince Henry was a rake, because, although all history tells us that he was so, the poet only has pictured his mad pranks? Had he died but yesterday, and Mr. Tyler were about to hand down his great achievements to posterity, would he

think it necessary to enter into the details of his youthful profligacy, or dream that some worthy gentleman, after the lapse of four hundred years, would call in question the truth of Mr. Tyler's general assertion, because he had not gratified public curiosity by writing a scandalous chronicle? Mr. Tyler is compelled to admit that the only really serious definite charge against the Prince is to a certain extent borne out by the facts. He allows (vol. i. p. 302) that, for some cause or other, near the close of the life of Henry the Fourth, the King and the Prince were at variance; that the Prince was dismissed from the Council, and his younger brother appointed in his stead; that the heir apparent then gathered together his retainers in a riotous manner and led them to his father's palace, where the quarrel was, somehow or other, hushed up. Mr. Tyler sees nothing in all this but filial affection, and the jealousy of designing people who envied "the sweet Prince,' and he entertains a strong suspicion that Queen Johanna, Henry the Fourth's second wife, was at the bottom of it. Mr. Tyler, indeed, has an evident dislike to that lady; for no other reason, that we can perceive, than that Henry the Fifth used her very ill. That circumstance affords presumption enough, in the estimation of Mr. Tyler, that she was quite capable of all the mischief he can set down to her account. But Mr. Tyler has omitted to notice that Henry's conduct to this unfortunate lady weighed heavily on his conscience, and that he endeavoured to make her a beggarly death-bed amends for his ill-usage. Either this fact has escaped the research of Mr. Tyler, or he has omitted to give it due weight; and as the evidence of it is curious and little known, we will place it before our readers, trusting that Mr. Tyler will take a proper opportunity of imitating the conduct of his hero by doing all he can to repair his injustice to Queen Joan.

On the 13th July 1422, six weeks before his death, Henry, being then in France, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, his Chancellor and Treasurer, in England, thus:

"Ryght worshipfull and worshipfull Faders in God, oure ryght trusty and welebeloved. Howe be hit, that we have do take into oure hande, sich a certeyn tyme, and for suche causes as ye knowe,

the douairs of our Moder Quene Johanne, whiche we assigned for the expens resounexcept a certeine pension therof yerely, able of hir, and of a certein meyné that shuld abide aboute hir; We, doubtyng lest hit shuld be a charge unto oure conscience, for to occupie forth lenger the said douair in this wise, the whiche charge we be avisid no longer to ber in our conscience, wol and charge youe, that as ye will stonde descharged in youre owen conscianswere to God for us in this cas, and ence also, that ye make deliverance unto oure said Moder the Quene, hooly of hir said douair, and suffre hir to reiciffe hit as she did hereafore. And that she mak hir officers whom hir lust, so thay be oure liege men, and good men, and that therfore we have yeve in charge and commandement at this tym, to mak hir plein restitution of hir douair above said. Ferthermore we wol and charge yowe, that hir beddes, and al other thyng mevables, that we had of hir, ye delivere hir ayeine. And ordeineth hir, that she have of such cloth, and of suche colour, as she wol devise hirself, v. or vi. gounes, such as she useth to were: and because we suppose she wol son remoeve from the plas where she is nowe, that ye ordeine hir also horses for ii. chares, and lat hir remove thens into what oyer place wythin owre roiaume that hir lust, and whanne her lust, &c. Writyn the xiii day of Juyll, the yere of oure reigne tenth."

We are not quite sure that Mr. Tyler does not owe a little reparation, also, to some other persons. What, for instance, is to be said about the following, which is one of many bitter passages against David Hume?

"Hume is no authority on any disputed point. An anecdote, of the accuracy of which the author has no doubt, throws a strong suspicion on the work of that writer, and marks it as a history on which the student can place no dependance. Hume made application at one of the public offices of State Records for permission to examine its treasures. Not only was leave granted, but every facility was afforded, and the documents bearing upon the subject immediately in hand were selected and placed in a room for his exclusive use. He never came. Shortly after, his work appeared: and, on one of the officers expressing his surprise and regret that he had not paid his promised visit, Hume said, I find it far more easy to consult printed works, than to spend

my time on manuscripts.' No wonder Hume's England is a work of no authority." (I. 360.)

We know not where Mr. Tyler found this anecdote, but it bears evident marks of exaggeration and untruth upon the face of it. David Hume, we will answer for it, never stultified himself in the way represented, and Mr. Tyler must have strange notions of the sources of English history, and of the mode in which the value of Hume as an historian ought to be estimated, if he thinks himself entitled to pronounce judgment ex cathedra in this flippant manner, or imagines that the credit of one of the most justly popular works in our language ought to be summarily disposed of upon the authority of such a paltry unauthenticated "anecdote."

Mr. Tyler fights for his hero after his accession to the throne just as vigorously as during his princedom. He was a reformer of Papal errors, he was no persecutor; he slaughtered his prisoners at Agincourt, but " he was brave, he was merciful"-" all the virtues under heaven" were too few for "Henry of Monmouth." Thaddeus of Warsaw," and the fine old heroes of romance, are the only beings with whom he may be compared.

Mr. Tyler's determination to make Henry the Fifth a mere "faultless monster," is particularly to be regretted, as he has bestowed pains and research upon his subject, and has possessed advantages which, if directed by a proper critical spirit, might have been most usefully applied. He has had unlimited facility of access to the Pell Records, and the acknowledgments scattered throughout his volumes imply that other more important documents were equally accessible to him. All these advantages have been sacrificed to the one great object of making the world believe that Henry was a sort of angel-mortal.

Some letters from Henry the Fifth to the citizens of London, written during the King's absence in France, with a reply sent to him under the city seal, are probably the greatest novelties in Mr. Tyler's volumes; but there is such a want of references to authorities, that we are by no means certain that even these have not been printed before. The book is indeed

very defective upon the subject of references, and papers evidently copied from printed works, as the proceedings of the Council and Ellis's Letters, are frequently referred-when there is any reference at all-to the primary instead of the secondary sources. Mr. Tyler prints also translations of documents instead of giving us the originals, which ought to have been inserted either in notes or in the appendix. This is a practice sure to lead to mistakes, even with men of learning. A conjectural emendation of a document printed in the original French in the Proceedings of the Council (vol. ii. p. 262), and in a translation by Mr. Tyler (vol. ii. p. 266), and the rendering of the papal title "saint pier," by "Saint Peter," instead of "holy father" (Tyler, vol. ii. 42, 46), sufficiently prove the danger of depending even upon Mr. Tyler.

We regret to speak thus unfavourably of an historical work emanating from a gentleman evidently possessed of a well-cultivated mind, and we have no doubt an ornament to the noble church of which he is a member; but if, to apply his own words, we had been 'tempted by morbid delicacy, or fear, to suppress or disguise" the fact that his book is a failure, we should have erred against the principle he himself lays down and beautifully expresses—a principle equally applicable to our task and to his -"the poet is dear, and our early associations are dear, and pleasures often tasted without satiety are dear; but, to every rightly-balanced mind, TRUTH IS DEARER THAN ALL.'

Poems, by John Kenyon.

THE immense body of poetry which issues in a constant stream from the press, can scarcely be known only to those persons called Reviewers; who see the long and endless battalions file off before them. Of course the greater part of this multitudinous mass must consist of weakness, folly, ignorance, and coxcombry of every kind. Books are now written by the ignorant for those more ignorant than themselves. A poetical cobbler has a coterie of his own, and there is a kind of undercurrent which carries off the floating carcases of the impression, sufficiently, we presume, to secure the publisher

from loss. We presume that a good deal of modern poetry of Byron and Moore, and perhaps Wordsworth, is read among the mechanics and humbler classes, and now and then such reading falls into the way of one who can also write; and when he does, the strange defects of his early education, with the acquired routine of poetical language he has caught, form one of the most strange and anomalous mixtures that can be conceived. We have one of these poems (not Mr. Kenyon's) now before us, in which after passages in which grammar and syntax have been violated in the grossest manner, rhymes rendered laughable by their utter absurdity, words wrongly spelt, wrongly accented, wrongly used, we meet with a few lines like the following:

The sun rose high above the hills, ere he
His palace left: with step elastic light,
He sought the sultan with a heart of glee.
Sweet nature shone before him rich and bright;
A soothing breeze, refreshing, wing'd its flight,
And sung and sported mid the rustling trees;
Small clouds, in clusters, delicate and white,
Kept rising o'er the mounts by slow degrees,
And hidden woodland brooks did sing their
lullabies.

The happy birds, with crests of richest hue,
Beneath the spreading leaves did sport and call,
And swiftly shot the waving branches through,
And flitted o'er the glist'ning waterfall.
The palm and cedar, in their beauty tall,
Rose o'er the whole with rich majestic head,
And like a bright and beauteous golden ball,
High rode the sun, his burnish'd streamers
spread,
[and red.
And tinged the sea and woods with amber deep

Now who could suppose that a person who had taste and education even to write such lines, should also be so ignorant as in the third line to spell sought-saught, and so on through the poem? From such writers we turn to the one before us, who appears to be a gentleman of education, taste, and learning; speaking in our usual plain and honest manner, we must say that the spark of divine genius is not very brilliant or large. In the car that bears the poet along, we cannot say that the steeds have necks clothed with thunder, or that the wheels glow with fire; but Mr. Kenyon has executed with elegance and fancy the style of poetry he has adopted. We do not like his introductory poem called 'Moonlight" so well as some others, as thinking it wanting in interest; but the versification is excellent, and the poetical

language shows discriminating and just taste. Parts of it remind us of the manner of Mr. Rogers's Italy; with which we think the author is familiar. Satires we are not very fond of. They are most difficult of composition, requiring a combination of so many qualities, that it is hopeless often to find; in fact, we have had no satire worth a farthing since the days of Pope. To our minds Byron's English Bards can only boast a few vigorous lines; and Gifford's Baviad is a forced unnatural fire-"killing butterflies upon a wheel." The poems he attacks with such malignant virulence were worthy only of a contemptuous smile; but subjects in his days were scarce, and he had determined to be a satirist. For such a character we think Mr. Kenyon too amiable and too well-bred; and accordingly we find, in his poem so designed, lines more fitting for a pastoral.

Now doubly sweet such refuge found with

books,

To stray with mild Piscator up the brooks,
With Cowley muse beneath the greenwood tree,
Or taste old Fuller's wise simplicity;
Or, if his Worthies, though removed their span,
Smack yet too strongly of the living man,
Then backward turn to question Homer o'er,
Or dream of storied ages roll'd before,
Faint-glimmering now, like far-off beacon-
light

O'er misty ocean, scarcely read aright.
But if, perplex'd by history's fabling theme,
Vex'd thought would float entire on fancy's

stream,

To me more dear than all the East e'er gave
Those nightly tales, Arabia's gift, I crave:
With Sinbad let me wander, sailor bold,
And hear his mighty marvels ten times told,
Or read again of Morgiana, who

The robber-chief with whirling dagger slew, Or fondlier lingering through charm'd hours, prolong

Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song,
Thrice summon'd, scarce I quit those Genii
bowers
Most loved, as most unlike this world of ours.

From these very pleasing lines, we turn to the miscellaneous verses, among which are many highly fanciful and elegant; it is as difficult to know which to select for presentation, as we used in our early days to find it to chose our partner among the blooming roses of beauty that sat with blushing cheeks and beating hearts around; let us make our bow to "The Moorland Girl:"

True! she had been in city gay,
And seen whate'er its pomp could show
To win her youthful heart away,
The courtly ball, the flattering beau,

And she hath form and face as fair As sculpture asks, or painting wills; Yet, spite of all that flatter'd there, Her heart was mid her native hills.

Once more amid those native hills,
A Moorland Girl, behold her bound,
While all her heart with pleasure fills
At rural sight or rural sound;
Whether she lift her eye to note
The kite, high circling in the gale,
Or pause to catch the tones that float
From hidden cushat down the dale.

Or if she climb the mountain side
To pluck her favourite heath again,
Or down the alder-valley glide,
Or linger in the fir-tree glen,
In bliss-the haunts of pomp and pelf
May never know-each moment wheels,
While sisters, spirits like herself,
Share and enhance the bliss she feels.

Sweet bud of beauty! Moorland Girl!
Still, still hold on thy dream-like race,
Far from the city's heartless whirl
And all the tribes of common place,
Still mould thine own wild paradise,
Enjoying-living-loving thus,-
And wheresoe'er thy presence is,
Shall still be paradise to us.

We have room to add one more :

Music.

Awake! thou harp! with music stored,
Awake! and let me feel thy power;
Fling forth in turn, from every chord,
The thronging notes in ceaseless shower!
Following thy measures as they rise,
Upfloating forms of every hue
Shall flit before my half-closed eyes,
And I will dream the visions true.

Breathless I list the streaming wires
Responsive to the minstrel-hand,
While faded hopes and young desires
Come stealing back, a pensive band.
Ah! now I know the sounds too well
Thy murmuring strings are fain to move,
For when may memory cease to dwell
On her who loved that lay of love?
For she could win thine every key,
From strains that suit a lady's bower
To fits of wildest minstrelsy

From moonlight glen or lonely tower.
Bold swelling notes of war-yet such
Their sound as told of pity near,
She loved them all-and every touch
Recalls my wandering thoughts to her.
Vain dreams, away! in vacant mood,
Now let my wearied heart recline;
No more I call on Fancy's brood
To mix, sweet harp, their spells with
thine.

Like one who drifts in idle boat
Unoar'd, and heedless whither bound,
Thus languid laid, oh! let me float
Adown thy silvery stream of sound.
'Tis soft as evening's dewy sigh,
Sweeter than summer's balmiest breath;
Half-conscious-half entranced I lie,
And seem to touch the verge of death.
And thus beguiled, how bless'd it were
To cross that dark and fated sea!
Then just escaped this world of care
To wake and-Nea! dwell with thee!

The Alternative, Disease and Premature Death, or Health and Long Life. By J. Pinney, Esq.

THE observations we have made on Mr. Johnson's work will apply to the present volume of Mr. Pinney's. To both gentlemen we are obliged for the interest they have taken in the preservation of our health, and some forty or fifty years hence we shall hope to review a nineteenth or twentieth edition of a work that has enabled us to pursue our pleasing avocations when plusquam octogenarius. In the meanwhile we must inform Mr. Pinney that, when at p. 72, he advises early rising with the sun and exercise, however suitable his observations may be for more genial climates, there are few seasons in England in which Aurora does not arise with too cold and damp a countenance to be at all agreeable: we conceive a promenade après déjeûné to be far more advisable. Secondly, at p. 84, Mr. Pinney says, the unwholesomeness of London air is seen in the stunted shrubs, trees, &c. Not so hasty! The carbon with which the air of London is loaded acts prejudicially on some plants, by mechanically stopping up the pores, but not by any unhealthy gases. A few years ago, the inhabitants of Gower-street had fine crops of peaches in their gardens; and even now the fig-tree grows admirably in the confined yards of Bedford-row and even of the city. The plane-tree is totally uninjured, and is more luxuriant in Cavendish and Berkeley-squares than in the bleaker and more exposed situations of the country. The elms and limes in St. James's Park are injured not by smoke, but by the wood-beetles. Observations should be made as to the particular plants that flourish, or