MR EDITOR, Ir has astonished me beyond measure, that that laborious, and generally dull class of compilers, who receive the learned name of bibliographers, when they ransack every hidden or dusty corner to discover some object worthy of their regard, should have altogether overlooked a very extensive, as well as interesting description of works that have exercised no small influence on

the science and literature of their country-I mean those useful, popular, and widely-diffused publications, ALMANACKS. I lament that I have not sufficient erudition fully to describe the vast variety of works that fall under this department of literature. It would be necessary to speak of the tables usually met with in old missals and prayer-books, where rules for preserving the health, and regulating the temperament of the body, preceded the more important forms of spiritual instruction of the predic tions of astrologers-the prognostications of diviners-the ephemerides of astronomers-the kalendars of shep

herds-and of innumerable other works.

But I would observe, that old almanacks, in general, contain verses, or short pieces of poetry, worthy of more lasting celebrity than they are often destined to enjoy. Scotland has long been celebrated for her almanacks; though the superior claims to popular utility of those issued annually by Aberdeen be forcibly opposed by those which cross the Irish Channel from Belfast; and we yet remain in doubtful perplexity as to the termination of this great national contest. I believe, however, that our northern capital can boast of having given birth to almanacks before one trowel was heard to tick where Belfast town now stands. The glorious names of Messrs Whyte, Swallow, and Mackcouldy-the deathless Abenezra, the Wandering Jew, and his rival James Paterson, Philomath-the illustrious John Man, teacher of mathematics, and his more formidable opponent, Merry Andrew, Professor of predictions by star-gazing at Tamtallan, (who by the way, in these lines, on the titles of one of his "almanacks after a new fashion,' shows his ingenuity in the address he

donia.

how widely the Metromanie raged in The poetic varieties alluded to, shew Scotland in those distant days. Every thing was taught or explained in verse. Not only was the Bible epitomized in metre, for the benefit of youth, and their grammar instilled into them by elegant and appropriate verse (the proof of such instruction may be traced in their innumerable proverbs)-but even the rules of arithmetic were transformed into lines of an equal number of syllables. I may adduce an instance or two of this from a curious work of great value now lying by me, entitled, "The Scots Arithmetician," advertises in it his readiness to inby the celebrated James Paterson, who house in the Cowgate, at the sign of struct in all the liberal sciences, at his

the Cross Staff and Quadrant. For the Rule of Reduction, the mode recommended (the reader must not fail to place the accent on the last syllable) -is this:

"For fractions of a fraction,

Work as multiplication.”

Nothing can be more simple than this. The direction for performing the Golden Rule of Three backwards (an exploit which no scholar of the present day can achieve within the first year of his studies)-runs thus :

"To work reverse, there needs no more
But work with third, as first before."
To prevent any misconception being
caused in the scholar by such extreme
conciseness, the author invariably sub-
joins to each rule what he emphati-
cally calls "the sense," in plain prose.
In his rule for "Supposition," he of-
fers an excuse for the chance of some
occasional misconception. It begins-
"For single supposition,

Suppose and work as truth were known,
And if you err, which well may be.

In that case, the shortest mode is just to try it over again with greater accuracy.

The great advantages of this metrical method of study is thus stated by one of the students themselves, whose name does not appear:

"Think not we toil with idle exercise, And spend our pains to gain an useless prize,

When bairnes we have learnit to poetize, &c." With regard to the higher branches of poetry, the following verses, by one of the tuneful tribe, is worth notice as it shews their persevering attachment to their art, in spite of ridicule and abuse seemingly directed against their more ambitious flights. We cannot sufficiently regret, that, like those of too many aspirants, the author's name has not been preserved :

"When poets write of soaring high, On Pegase' wing to Mount Parnassus, Worldlings with laughing almost die, And call us fools, and brain-sick asses. "Oh! let them rail-their grovelling sight Ne'er had a glimpse of our moon's rays;

Though heavenly sounds salute our ears 'Tis not so much to meet ApolloAs th' enchanting nymphs amid the spheres, 'Tis them who tempt us-them we follow. "Ah! ravished there, no joys we miss,

Such favours though of rapturous feeling, Words dare not tell; ev'n of earthly bliss,

Honour approves not our revealing." The infinite superiority of ancient almanacks over those of the present day, is thus to be sought for in the fund of fine poetry which they contain; and as a farther proof of this, I shall give you a few extracts from the "Perpetuum Kalendarium Astronomicum; or, a Perpetual Astronomical Kalendar, &c. &c. continued to Infinity," &c.-The length of the whole title is too great to be given entire, and concludes with the modest assertion"The like not extant. By Thomas Todd, Philomath, Edinburgh. Printed in the year 1738;"-of a quarto size, and containing 72 pages. At p. 19. occur some verses in explanation of a VOL. IV.

table," which shews the hour of the day, by the length of your shadow, measured by your feet," &c.-These begin boldly

Here I do stand on level ground, My shadow to survey ;—

but I refrain copying them, as modern art could hardly do justice to the necessary accompaniment of an elegant portraiture of Tho. Todd, his conical shadow-(if this be not a mistake for comical?) There are other verses illustrative of various tables and calFor instance, the rules

culations.

"The Position of given for observing lines containing the enunciation of a the Moon in Signs," and with these general truth; and perhaps some of your readers may regret not seeing the whole, as the moon is now acknowledged to have no small influence, not only in husbandry, but over the human faculties:

"For ev'ry thing there is a time
And season under heaven,
So by the moon, in every sign,
The times above are given.'

The verses upon the tides, beginning

"The sea hath fits, much like this giddy age,"

might almost bear a comparison with Lord Byron's sublime Apostrophe to the Ocean. I prefer, however, extracting the following Epigram, as being more independent of Mr Todd's calculations, and pointing out to disputatious litigants, the treatment they may finally expect even when successful. It has, I believe, been modernized a little, and passed off for a jeud'esprit of our own age:

"Two lawyers, when a knotty cause was o'er,

Shook hands, altho' they quarrell'd hard

before;

Oh! say their clients, Pray come tell us how Can you be friends, that were such foes just now?

They answer'd quickly, These things we do

far he has succeeded. After a spirited invocation to this effect, "Come, mighty muse, my soul to heav'n inspire!

Touch thou my cranium with poetic fire," &c.;

he proceeds more in the style of the immortal predecessor, whom he emulates:

"An everlasting kalendar is here,

For it is made for full ten thousand year; And thrice ten thousand more (if time do hold)."

This proviso must be allowed to be judicious, whether we regard the duration of Mr Todd's book, or that of the world we inhabit. He goes on in a strain of humble trust in the immortality of his fame since unequalled, except in the lyrics of a Hunt or a Thurlow. This book, indeed, is worth its weight in gold.

"I shall forbear (being needless for to praise), This work, I know the worth, its name

will raise.

In this projection, I sev'n years did spend, Nor do I think the like was ever penn'd." But it is full time I should close my epistle; and I cannot take better leave of this work, or of your readers, than by using Mr Todd's own words, which are certainly both affectionate and striking.

"Farewell my pretty book, thy work is done,

From thence throughout the world thou my sun," &c.

and then passes on to his reader: Now, friendly reader, this I've penn'd for

THESE Volumes will greatly delight all lovers of English Poetry. A work on poetry, from the hand of a poet, always promises gratification. We know of certainty, that in such a case, no clouded dissatisfaction of intellectno shut up sense-no narrow and restricted belief in the privileges of genius will cross and perplex the clear vision of the mind which delivers to us its precepts, or descants in illustration of power and beauty. Nor do we ever doubt, that along with pleasure, we must also derive instruction from such a critic. We know that, although our own minds are sensible to poetry, and may even be able to give some account to themselves of the delights which it inspires, yet that he who speaks of that divine art in which he excels, must speak of all its most hidden mysteries with a clearer intuition, and with the unfaultering voice of one clothed with authority. We know that our own feelings and conceptions, thus shown to us brightened and magnified, return with trebled impressions, and a more fixed form upon our hearts;-and that the exposition which is so given by the poet of

his feelings and our own, can be acknowledged by our intelligence as a portion of the philosophy of selfknowledge.

During no period of our literature was there ever more need than at present of philosophical criticism on poetry by poets. Professed critics, from the highest to the lowest, have set themselves by far too much in defiance and hostility to the great masters of the art, whose principles they have taken it upon themselves to expound; and an arrogant tone of assumed superiority almost universally pervades the body of our periodical criticism. This ar rogance, which is sometimes the delusion of self-ignorant vanity, and sometimes the defence of self-conscious weakness, is too often communicated by such writers to their readers; so that instead of a genial, free-hearted, pure, loving and reverent spirit towards the works of men of genius, and towards the men themselves, the youth of the present age may without injustice be said to be very generally characterized either by a careless insensibility, or what is still worse, a supercilious disdain towards

intellects and compositions of the very first order.

The person who now-a-days takes the chair, or mounts the rostrum of the critic, must, above all things, keep at arm's-length all the living poets he must speak of them as wholly inferior to himself in real strength and endowment-or at least as men whom he is entitled to rate soundly whenever they have the temerity to depart from those rules which he has, in the plenitude of his wisdom, chosen to lay down for the regulation of their art. An Aristarchus is now-a-days looked on by many as a -nobler being than a Homer-and the critic who writes rashly and blindly of poetry, enjoys with many a higher fame than the bard whose lips have been touched with a coal from heaven. It is not impossible that such criticism as this may have a baleful influence on poetry. We think that it has, in some remarkable instances, affected the minds of poets, in a manner of which they are themselves perhaps unconscious. Perceiving that the banner of criticism is unfurled, not to grace their triumphs, but rather to wave over their defeats, it is not to be wondered at, if they too come to feel a spirit of hostility towards their aggressors;-and if a sort of perpetual warfare be thus carried on between them, which renders the spirit of criticism more bitter, and disturbs, with the expression of angry passion, the faces of the muses themselves, which ought ever to be "Not of this noisy world, but silent and divine."

Surely there is something unnatural in this opposition. There is no cause of rivalry-much less of hatred between good poets and good critics. Both must, in order to produce any thing truly great, write in the spirit of love -nor can we imagine any thing more painfully humiliating, than the spectacle of a critic seeking to found for himself a reputation for talents on the ruins wrought by his own hand, of what he must yet love and admire in his heart-except, perhaps, it be that of a poet, who suffers his powers to be disturbed, and, consequently, weakened, by such unprincipled aggression.

We think that few of our readers will dissent from the opinion we have now expressed of the reigning spirit of the criticism of the age. Men of real talents have led the way-and now we

hear on all sides, from the veriest quacks and pretenders, the same lofty and authoritative tone of decision that is unbecoming from the lips, even of gifted men, but from that other class altogether disgusting and intolerable.

One of the most striking exhibitions of this cold, captious spirit, is in the contrast of its language, when speaking of the living and of the dead. It would seem beneath its dignity to allow greatness to a contemporary. This earth would not be pleasant to such critics, if they thought it was trodden by a poet, before the ascendancy of whose genius they were forced to bow. They do not wish that there should be any giants in the land during their days. But when time has set the dead poet at a distance from themselves

they no longer feel as if there were any danger of their being dwindled into dwarfs by far-off and shadowy phantoms-and then, they who withhold, with a jealous niggardliness, the smallest pittance of praise from the most illustrious of the living, break out into inflated and hollow eulogies, equally unreasonable and disproportionate, of the dead. Thus an ingenious sophist of these days, who speaks of Spenser in the language of adoration, has not been ashamed to declare before the public, in a course of lectures on English poetry, that he has only a dim recollection of the Thalaba, Madoc, and Roderic, of Southey, as being heavy and long poems, destitute of beauty, and altogether worthless.

Criticism, whatever may be its occasional brilliance and acumen-nay, even its occasional truth-can be of no value, when thus inconsistent and insincere. It is no unusual thing to see men of great talents under the dominion of strong prejudices. But the true love of beauty and of grandeur shews itself in uniform and consistent display-it durst not, for the spirit within it, irreverently treat objects of reverence-it does not prodigally lavish itself upon some fair and worthy spiritual things, and then perversely scowl upon others-but holding all things sacred which contribute to its own pure and etherial enjoyment, it considers as sacrilege against nature, any insult imagined or offered to works created in her spirit.

There is no extravagance in saying that poetry is religion-and that puresouled and high-minded poets are its

ministers. The critic who knows how wide is the empire of the imagination -and who also knows how awful is the power which it exerts over human life, its virtues and its happiness-will consider the duties and the character of a true poet, with something of a "holy fear"-and he will be cautious how he impairs either his own reverence, or the reverence of others, towards those who are emphatically the benefactors of mankind, so long as they dedicate themselves to pure ministra tions and to the vindication of the dignity of human desires and human faculties.

A singleness of heart would seem to be as essential to our admiration and love of true beauty in the fine arts, as of true moral worth in the practice of life. All great philosophers and critics have been remarkable for a dignified simplicity of thought and feeling, by which they seem to have been guided to truth; they have ever preferred looking on the works of man or of nature through the sunny atmosphere of love and admiration; and we have seen them well-contented in their wisdom with what little men have in their folly glanced at with the peevish eye of dissatisfaction and scorn. Our own Stewart-the greatest philosopher of his age, possesses much of this happy character, and has instructed us in language so beautiful, that it could only be breathed from a soul having its chosen dwelling-place in beauty, that true wisdom searches only for what is fair, or great, or glorious; and that despondency, rather than exultation, should ever attend the unwilling perception of frailty, imperfection, or error in the creations of genius.

We have been led into these reflections by the first delightful merit which struck us in Mr Campbell's book. There is great pleasure in observing the interest with which this great poet, who has undertaken to be our guide, recognises poetry wherever he finds it; and the pure and gentle affection to wards all the productions of poetry with which he traverses his various regions, and pursues his various researches. There is a lenient disposition towards all genuine acts of the poetical spirit, however humble or disguised, and not only a zeal for the vindication of poets from the aspersions of criticism, but a desire to re

deem them from their own impurities -to strip from merit the incumbering and disguising mantle in which it has sometimes shrouded itself-and to make excellence permanently visible and known-leaving the faults that dishonoured or obscured it to fall inte natural oblivion.

The first volume is occupied with a historical "Essay on English poetry," taking up the subject from the earliest time in which the language became English, and carrying it down to the age of Pope. This essay is very remarkable by the ease and pleasure with which it leads along the mind of the reader through periods and subjects often in themselves, it might be thought, dark, perplexing, tedious, and some times repulsive. For splendid as the great æras of English poetry have been, and delightful as the contemplation is, in every form, of the works, the life, the memory of the great writers who have adorned them—yet every reader knows, who has gone back at all into our poetical antiquities, how dreary and barren long periods are-what a confined, multifa◄ rious, and oppressive mass of composition the industry of the lesser writers of English poetry has bequeathed, in spite of oblivion, to posterity. Even the formation of poetry-a refreshing and lovely sight in some countries, like the freshness of nature in the morning's spring-has not this character in our own. The burst of poetry among the Troubadours of southern France, was like the flush of flowers that brightens the dawning year. The early written poetry of the German nations is full of the same vigour of life, which we may believe swelled in the forgotten songs of their ancient bards. Delight breathed inspiration into the fancy of Italian poets in the origin of the art, and music into the sounds of their verse. But in England the early history of the art scarcely affords poetical pleasure. With the exception of the great Chaucer, who stands in wonderful separation from his own, from the preceding, and from the following age, it shews us a dreary prospect of toilsome invention and compilation, of which the merits are any thing but those of a poet's mind. And assuredly, in running down the course of English poetry, a strange feeling of perplexity and wonder continually fixes itself on