of the little ovens, hornitas. They contain nodules of basalt embedded in a mass of indurated clay. The slope of the great volcano, which is constantly burning, is covered with ashes. We reached the inside of the crater by climbing the hill of scorified and branching lavas. We shall here observe, as a remarkable fact, that all the volcanoes of Mexico are ranged in a line from East to West; and which forms, at the same time, a parallel of great elevations. In reflecting on this fact, and comparing it with our observations on the bocche nuove of Vesuvius, we are tempted to suppose that the subterraneous fire has pierced through an enormous crevice which exists in the bowels of the earth between the latitudes of 18° 59′ and 19° 12′, and stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean.'-(vol. ii. p. 103.)

We have endeavoured in the preceding pages to bring together the membra disjecta,-those huge protuberances starting out of the backbone of the earth,-scattered as we find them in these volumes, without any attempt at arrangement; and we are not aware that we have omitted the notice of any object of actual ' research' on the spot which could be deemed either curious or important. We have dwelt but little, and that little will perhaps be thought too much, on those cycles and calendars, those chronologies and cosmogonies extracted out of the-to us, at leastunintelligible daubings designated under the name of the Codices Mexicani.' To M. de Humboldt, however, they would appear to be of first-rate importance, and some idea may be formed of his laborious Researches' (in the libraries of Europe) to collect and explain those Sybilline documents, and to trace, in their dark and mysterious leaves, the parallels' and analogies' between the several natives of the old world and the Aztecks, the Toltecks, the Cicimecks, and Tlascaltecks,-from the list which he has given, rather ostentatiously, as we think, of authors or works referred to at the end of the second volume, occupying fifteen pages, and containing the names of about two hundred and forty different authors or books of all ages, nations, aud languages, from the Bible to Carey's Pocket Atlas, from the Iliad to some obscure Magazine. On the whole, however, we deem the descriptive part of these 'Researches' less objectionable, as being less prolix, than the 'Personal Narrative,' though strongly tinged with the same faults as those which we took the liberty of pointing out in that work.

ART. IX. The Poetic Mirror, or the Living Bards of Britain. London. Longman and Co. fc. 8vo. pp. 275. 1816. OUR readers, we flatter ourselves, will not have entirely forgotten the opinions which we expressed in a former Number* on the

No. XV. Articles VIII, and XI.

subject

subject of parodies. They are, like mimicry, good only when they are short and striking-when they produce mirth by the happy travestie of some popular passage, or when they mix instruction with amusement, by detecting latent absurdity, and developing the disguises of bad taste.

The work at present before us is a series of parodies, which want the most essential merits of that species of cheap wit. They are long-they do not remind us of any individual popular passagesand the ideas excited by them are nearly those which the authors imitated would, we presume, wish to convey; in short, they are much less parodies than imitations, and though the writer evidently intends to be very pleasant, his whole merit reduces itself to the degree of power which he exhibits in writing such verses as his prototypes might, in a careless hour, have written.

We shall make our view of this matter more familiar to our readers, by calling to their recollection the direct effect of mimicry. We have all seen, with inexpressible delight, that admirable tragedian, Mr. Kemble; we have also seen some wags, like Mr. Mathews and Company, who mimic the peculiarities of this great actor, and we have laughed at them, without any derogation of our respect for his Hamlet or Macbeth. We have also seen actors who were not the mimics but the imitators of Mr. Kemble, who pleased us without exciting any thing like merriment, and who were most successful when we forgot that they were imitators.

What Mathews is to Mr. Kemble, the Rejected Addresses were to Southey and Scott, very like and very laughable; but the author now before us is the grave and not at all laughable imitator. This we say rather in reference to the effect which he produces, than that which he is desirous of producing; for it is evident that he intends to be merry, and will be disappointed at being told that he is like without being ludicrous. He is not, however, in all cases like, and in one or two he is ludicrous. The imitation of Lord Byron has no resemblance, and that of Mr. Wordsworth is amusing. But it is time to acquaint our readers with the plan and scope of this work.

We have heard that Mr. Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, had written to some living poets to favour him with specimens of their works to furnish out a kind of original Anthology, which he was desirous of publishing; and some wicked wag, probably one of those very personages to whom he addressed himself, has seized on the idea as his own property, and has published, as the contributions of the several living poets of Great Britain, his own imitations of their styles, and amongst them one of poor Mr. Hogg himself. That of Lord Byron comes first, and is called 'The Guerrilla;' but we cannot discover in what the likeness to Lord Byron consists:

the

the stanza, indeed, is that of Childe Harold, and the hero is as mad and ferocious as Conrade or Lara; but that most striking and essential feature of Lord Byron's poetry, the description of the workings of the mind, of the agitation of the intellects, the embodying the feelings of a high and wounded spirit, of a vain, proud, selfish heart, of a wild, daring, and romantic imagination, are not to be found here; and we need not add, that where they are not, there is nothing of the distinctive character of Lord Byron's genius.

The best stanza is the last, but our readers will judge how little
it resembles the glorious morbidezza of his Lordship's colouring.
It was Alayni-dost thou wail his case?—
Beloved unhappy, restless unbeloved.

Oh, there are minds that not for happiness
Were framed here nor hereafter, who ne'er proved

A joy, save in some object far removed,

Who leave with loathing that they longed to win,
That overmore to that desired hath roved,

While the insatiate gnawing is within,

And happiness for aye beginning to begin.'-p. 26.

As an imitation this is poor enough, and as a parody it falls infinitely short of the pleasantry of the Rejected Addresses, which touch so happily on the querulous, antithetical, and metaphysical tone of this noble and extraordinary writer.

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,

And nought is every thing, and every thing is nought.'

The next author in the series is Mr. Walter Scott. In imitation of him we have an Epistle to Mr. Southey,' in the tone of the admirable introductions to the several Cantos of Marmion, which is followed by a regular or rather irregular lay in three Cantos of twenty or thirty stanzas each, called Wat o' the Cleuch. Wat o' the Cleuch is, we presume, a familiar designation for Walter Scott of Buccleugh, a well known borderer; and the tale is one of mosstrooping, reaving and raiding, pricking over Tiviot, swimming Tweed, and drinking the Monks of Roxburgh's ale.' This poem never could have been intended for a pleasantry on Mr. Scott's styleit is an imitation in good earnest; and though it wants ease, and is written apparently in great haste, and though the author makes too frequent forays into Mr. Scott's borders, the resemblance is lively, and the poem has that degree of merit that a very careless sketch of Mr. Scott's might have had.

The first four stanzas of this poem will give the reader a good idea of the author's power of imitation; they will recognize exactly the tone and spirit of Mr. Scott, but they will see in it nothing to laugh at. As the follower of Mr. Scott the author may have some claim to attention, but as a parodist he has none; for the metre, the

language,

language, the images, &c. are, at least, as consonant to the story and character of the persons as Mr. Scott's style is to some of his own fables and personages.

1.

'Wat o' the Cleuch came down through the dale,
In helmet and hauberk of glistening mail;
Full proudly he came on his berry-black steed,
Caparison'd, belted for warrior deed.

O bold was the bearing, and brisk the career,
And broad was the cuirass and long was the spear,
And tall was the plume that waved over the brow
Of that dark reckless borderer, Wat o' the Cleuch.

2.

His housing, the buck's hide, of rude massy fold,
Was tassell'd and tufted with trappings of gold;
The henchman was stalworth his buckler that bore;
He had bowmen behind him, and billmen before;
He had Bellenden, Thorleshope, Reddlefordgreen,
And Hab o' the Swire, and Jock of Poldean;
And Whitstone, and Halston, and hard-riding Hugh,
Were all at the back of bold Wat o' the Cleuch.

3.

'As Wat o' the Cleuch came down through the dale,
The hinds stood aghast and the maidens grew pale,
The ladies to casement and palisade ran,

The vassals to loop-hole and low barbican,
And saw the bold borderers trooping along,
Each crooning his war-note or gathering-song;
O many a rosy cheek changed its hue

When sounded the slogan of Wat o' the Cleuch!

4.

As downward they past by the Jed and the Roule,
The monk took his crozier, his cord, and his cowl,
And kneel'd to the Virgin with book and with bead,

And said Ave-Maria and mutter'd his creed,

And loudly invoked, as he clasped the rood,

Saint Withold, Saint Waldave, Saint Clare, and Saint Jude!
He dreaded the Devil, to give him his due,

But held him as nothing to Wat o' the Cleuch.'—pp. 55—57. We really cannot help suspecting that, though some of the subsequent articles are evidently factitious, Wat o' the Cleuch may be the real though imperfect offspring of the prolific and sometimes hasty pen of Mr. Scott himself; how it has got into the hands of the publisher we cannot divine, and we speak with unfeigned sincerity when we say we have no other ground for our suspicion than the internal evidence.

The imitation of Mr. Scott occupies 100 pages of the volume.

which contains only 270. The next fifty or sixty pages are dedicated to the ridicule of Mr. Wordsworth, and it is here only that the author assumes, every now and then, the legitimate line of parody by applying the high sounding blank verse, the intricate combinations of thought and affected phrases of Mr. Wordsworth, to objects still more ludicrously low than Mr. Wordsworth himself, daring as he is in this way, ventures to do. There are three extracts from the poem called the Recluse, which are entitled The Flying Taylor, James Rigg,' and 'The Stranger;' they are amusing enough, but they are too long; the comic parts are too rare, and the general style of imitation is too laboured, and approaches too near the acknowledged beauties of Mr. Wordsworth's style.

The description of the infancy of the Flying Taylor is enlivened by such passages as these.

'Him from his birth unto his death I knew: And many years before he had attain'd

The fulness of his fame, I prophesied

The triumphs of that youth's agility,

And crown'd him with that name which afterwards
He nobly justified—and dying left

To Fame's eternal blazon-read it here

"The Flying Tailor!"

It is somewhat strange

That his mother was a cripple, and his father

Long way declined into the vale of years

When their son Hugh was born. At first the babe

Was sickly, and a smile was seen to pass

Across the midwife's cheek, when, holding up

The little wretch, she to the father said,

"A fine man-child!" What else could they expect?
The mother being, as I said before,

A cripple, and the father of the child

Long way declined into the vale of years.

But mark the wondrous change-ere he was put

By his mother into breeches, Nature strung

The muscular part of his economy

To an unusual strength, and he could leap,

All unimpeded by his petticoats,

Over the stool on which his mother sat,

More than six inches--o'er the astonish'd stool.'-pp. 156, 157. But the following, which describes James Rigg, after an explosion in a quarry in which he was working had deprived him of sight, is one which we think, with the exception of one or two lines, Mr. Wordsworth would not disclaim; and we think that the cold and heavy pleasantry of these lines are not enough to constitute a parody, and give no very favourable specimen of the author's turn for humour.

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