poor gentlewomen. Papa says, they must read, and improve their understandings. The beaus roar vengeance if they talk blue. Both are to be obeyed, and the ladies become ciphers.

It is quite occupation enough for them in society, to keep their tongues from giving vent to the fulness of their minds, and to put a timely check upon any unlucky train that might lead to the obvious but forbidden subject. Literature is sent into Coventry, nor allowed the least part in the game,-every one that it approaches, cries out in affright, as they used at school, "You're none of my child."

Gertrude and her sister are the very antipodes of bluism; and though they read really more than any of their acquaintance, the very mention of a book seems as if it would choke them. It is amusing malice to start a subject of the kind before them, and see the evasions and pretended ignorance with which they endeavour to be rid of it. Wo to the wight, that knowingly transgresses, if he have any horror of frowns and sour faces. The stranger who sins through ignorance, always receives the same ready answer, " Is it good?—No, I haven't seen it ;" and off goes the conversation into another channel. Books, however, are revenged of them, even while there is the greatest struggle to conceal that they hold any converse with such musty companions. Opinions "cut and dry" escape every moment; and it is surprising, really surprising, how their feelings agree with the last review, whose cover never profaned their eyes. Did they talk openly and discuss unconstrainedly books as well as other things, the acute spirit of conversation alone would strike out original opinions and ideas, even if they never arrived at such a trouble as thought. But all such avenues to good sense are closed: the hours of study, of conversation, and of complete leisure, are distinct-each season dedicated to itself. They do not aid one another, and being disunited, produce nothing. Between them the mind is disorganized and distracted; all the faculties frittered away, and all humours blended into insipidity. There is neither the sense of the thoughtful, nor the vivacity of the thoughtless; their seriousness is trifling, and their trifling seriousness. In short, they are "neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring."

A downright reading lady is certainly a bore; yet she is something-an entity, which dull propriety is not. If a person will be but patient, and indulge her innocent humour, when the top of the cask runs off, there will be much worth coming at. And even the ridiculous part of the character is more in the name and cant of vituperation, than in any thing else. The anti-blue has double the quantity of pretence and vanity. The greatest of affectations is that of good sense-the affectation of being deep or well-read amounts not to one quarter of the self-importance

of being sensible. We all fish for the good opinions of each other, some openly, some underhand. And I, for my part, am as willing to give my share to the person who stretches the hand out for it, as to the one who in sullen and coquettish pride awaits my proffer. What half the world calls affectation, is the most unsophisticated nature-the unrestrained indulgence of natural humour-the form in which the sapling shoots; it must be warped and bandaged to accurate straightness. The ro pe the acme of propriety-is the highest possible point of artificiality. If you be sceptical, reader, I appeal to your dancing-master, whoever he may be, to bear me out.

But all the old saws and philippics against learned ladies have become stale and invalid. There is no longer a chasm between learning and life-the essayists of the last century flung a bridge over it. The most abstract speculations, the most insignificant customs, were equal and welcome to them. All topics became blended, known, and discussed. The domain of knowledge was unenclosed,-thrown into a common, and now the tripping step of the fair may as well stray over it as the dull plod of the university professor. The world and books are no longer at variance, they are one and the same thing, and there is not to be found between them that antithesis, which has been so much harped upon in the common-places of moral sentimentalists. A library is now a school of the world. And although there never were displayed more originality and liberty of opinion, yet it is not exclusive or pedantic; it is set in the key of human nature, and springs from the common source of vulgar and sound feeling. It is a complaint, that the world has grown tame, and hath a void in it; that it wants the marvels, the adventures, "the moving accidents by flood and field," the prominent ruggedness of character, and the strained heights of enthusiasm which it used to have. It is true, the workings of the mind are not now displayed in action, we have too much an eye upon one another; -the sneer of the satirist has become more powerful than the lance of the champion. The objects of excitement have been transferred from the highway to the page: it is no longer to the breathless and open-mouthed story-teller that we listen, who had seen all with his own eyes; we must gather tidings from the formal page, and through it alone are conveyed the objects, feelings, and emotions, which we used to catch from the living scene of life. Hence print has become part of our existencehas superseded vulgar sight and fame; like to the air we breathe, it is the medium through which we receive sound and light, every idea, and every feeling,-beyond whose influence we cannot get, and could not live.

To exclude the sex from books in early days was nothing, the volume of life was ample and open; but such a prohibition at

+

this time of day is putting out a sixth sense,-depriving the mind of all knowledge and discernment. People used formerly to write with their pens, but now they talk with them. I have myself sat surrounded with the publications of the day,-dipping into them all, till I have imagined a thousand pens wagging like tongues, scolding, flattering, soliloquizing, dealing out lies, puns, and stories, so volubly, that I have been stunned with the ima ginary noise, as though the apartment were a Babel. And are not women at home,-quite in their proper sphere in such a scene as this? Who will deny it?

Y.

SONG.

Oh! Love doth dwell,
Like Truth, in a well;
Of late I found the urchin:
But ah! fair maid,
Too dear I've paid
For all my busy searching.

For when I spied
Him in the tide,

The truant archly beckon❜d,

And rash to win,

I soon was in

Much deeper than I reckon❜d.

Know'st thou the spring,

Where Love his wing

Bathes ever sweet and sly?
Canst thou not guess
The wizard place?
"Tis, Lady, in thine eye.

Let others skim

Sweets from the brim,

And glory when they've got 'em,

While Love and I

Together lie,

Like pebbles, at the bottom.

Y.

LECTURES ON POETRY, BY T. CAMPBELL.

LECTURE IV.

Greek Poetry.

THE fate of the surviving conquerors of Troy, whose thrones and dominions had been exposed to usurpation and violence during their absence, constituted an era in the history of Greece as eventful and as fruitful in traditions as the Trojan war itself. Those traditions, long after the time of Homer, were taken up by the Cyclic poets; and we hear in particular of one work called the Necro, or returns (of the heroes from Troy), in which their histories were collectively embodied. In that work, as well as in Greek tragedy, princes were commemorated who were certainly of more importance to the general interests of Greece, than a chief whose dominions were so remote and insignificant as those of Ithaca. But still the name of Ulysses had great attractions for the best and oldest of poets, as the. subject of a sequel to the tale of Troy. The maritime distance of his home justified a tissue of fabulous events, which could not have been consistently introduced in describing the return of a chief to any neighbouring shore of Greece. Even the poverty of his dominions bespoke an interest to the imagination, from their seeming less to invite his ambition than his local and domestic affections.

It is true that Ulysses is a hero much more according to ancient than to modern taste. His sagacity is a little too subtle for our ideas of the sublime. Minerva herself rallies him with having been a cunning urchin in his childhood, and always expert at equivocation. But the goddess accuses him of this with so much goodhumour, as to show that she was not displeased with it; and in judging of Pagan morality, we must make allowance for those circumstances of existence which rendered subtlety an almost necessary ingredient in human wisdom. If we consider too the trials through which Ulysses is feigned to pass, we shall conceive that the poet was bound, in consistency, to furnish him with a cautious as well as a hardy character. He loses his companions-he goes forth alone against the world-he has to break through supernatural dangers and allurements, to seek the only spot of earth that was sacred to his virtuous affections; and his head grows grey before

There was a controversy even among the ancients respecting the exact range of works that were to be included under the name of Cyclic poetry; but the term, I think, is often used so widely as to be applicable to all the epic and narrative mythological poetry of ancient Greece subsequent to Homer and Hesiod. It comprehended a series of works, the titles of which are now almost their only remains, though their various subjects embraced a connected fabulous history of the world, from the marriage of the Earth and Heaven down to the siege of Troy, and even to the adventures of its returning besiegers.-See Heyne on the Second Eneid of Virgil.

† Odyss. xiii. 291.

VOL. II. No. 9.-1821.

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he reaches it. Even with this great object at his heart, however, the traits of his circumspection and fortitude are not overcharged. His character is only generally marked by them. The poet was too natural to represent him as a mere abstraction of stoicism: on the contrary, he displays him making several very human-like aberrations both from virtue and prudence, forgetting himself at one time in the arms of Circe, till his crew are obliged to remind him of his wife and family;* and on another occasion, indulging in very ill-timed merriment upon an angry giant, who is very near repaying his sarcasms by pelting his ship to the bottom. His temper, however, upon the whole, has an impressive strength and serenity; nor is even his accustomed obduracy without its use in heightening the pathos of his situations. For when Ulysses is moved, our conception of what he feels is heightened by remembering the fortitude that gives way to his feelings; and the torrent of his sensations appears the deeper and stronger for the mass of resistance which it overcomes. His heart is not lightly susceptible, but, when it is touched, it is with earnest and long vibrations. Thus when his social affections are brought forth in the sunshine of Alcinous's hospitality, when he wraps himself up in his mantle, and surrenders himself, at the voice of poetry and music, to involuntary bursts of sensibility, or when he loses even his habitual patience at Penelope's scruples to recognise him, or when he meets his aged and fainting father in the garden, where he had sported in his childhood-his emotions amidst those scenes affect us doubly from our contrasting them with his self-command on other exquisitely trying occasions, where the poet describes him as looking with impassive eyes, "immoveable as horn or steel."‡ Whilst the Odyssey resembles the Iliad in its diction and descriptive manner, it opens an interesting variety in epic poetry. It concentrates our sympathy on fewer characters, its interest is less warlike and public, its concourse of agents is less magnificent, and its tone of action and feeling is less impetuous. On the other hand, it has the twofold charm of being at once the most familiar and the most fanciful of all ancient draughts of existence, abounding in the minutest traits of domestic manners, and at the same time teeming with a wildness of imagination, which, classical as the poem is, may be truly denominated romantic. Had the poet been equally disposed to have sported with the marvellous in the Iliad, the vicinity of the Troade to Greece would have been a check upon his fancy. But the scene of fiction was now to be shifted, and expanded over scenes that might be peopled at will with Odyss. x. 473. Odyss. ix. 481. † Οφθαλμοὶ δ ̓ ὡσεὶ κέρα ἔφασαν, με σίδηρος Ατρέμας ἐν βλεφάροισι,

*

an expression in the thrilling passage of the 19th book, (line 211.) where he suppresses his tears at the sight of those which Penelope sheds on hearing his name whilst he is in her presence, but before it is safe to make himself known.