faults. It is true that they are somewhat trifling; but his verses are so good, that we could wish to see them perfect:

Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.

Occasionally a bad rhyme is observable; though we must do Mr. Walpole the justice to say that upon the whole he is extremely careful on this point. Warm' and 'form' do not constitute a legitimate rhyme; nor, unless our memory fails us extremely, are they to be found corresponding in any good poet. The example of Darwin, we know, may be urged against us; and Darwin possesses no small share of our admiration; but it must be allowed that he is no model. The sound of him' and limb' (page 114) is certainly similar; but it is a shabby rhyme. We also notice the substantives glow' and gloom' in the plural number: this, to say the least, is an inelegancy; as each of these words concludes a line, we should be led to suspect that the author had introduced them for the sake of the thyme, were it not that such a supposition would be unworthy of Mr. Walpole's talents. The translation from the Greek, page 119,has been before mentioned as a very moderate performance. The third line of the first stanza,

Still glows my passion's earliest heat,'

is almost obscure. It ill expresses, what we suppose it was meant to express, that his passion is still as fervent as when in its earliest stage. The first line of the fourth stanza,

The roses on thy lips are still,'.

is very poor and very lame.

It is to be presumed, that in what follows (page 121), the fourth line of every stanza is intended to be Iambic Dimeter Catalectic. The last line then of the second stanza wants a syllable. How could Mr. Walpole imagine (what he certainly must have imagined) that the word 'require, is a trissyllable?-This little poem is indisputably one of the best. We have quoted a part of it above. Yet there are several errors in it. Perfume' and 'scent' in the third stanza mean the same thing. Haunts' and dawn,' which come close together in the fourth, make a disagreeable jingling. We read of the purple light of love' in Gray; Phrynichus (apud Athenæum)

has

Λάμπει δ' ἐπὶ πορφυρέησι

Παρείησι ΦΩΣ ΕΡΩΤΟΣ,

and the expression is delightful in either language: but beauty's light' (in the stanza alluded to) is not so.

And sparkling glow with passion warm.'

Does 'warm' agree with ' passion ?'-if it does, it is superfluous and weak. Is it the nominative case agreeing with 'eyes' which occurs two lines before?-it is the same.

In page 137, line 6, we do not approve of blushing' and 'bloom' being so near one another. In the first place, they have nearly the same signification; in the next place, the alliteration, however fashionable, is any thing rather than a beauty.

And sighing o'er, inhales the soft perfume."

The pronoun 'them' is wanting. The genius of the English language, unlike that of the Latin and Greek, does not suffer the omission of the pronoun. With these exceptions, the whole of this sonnet (for a sonnet we take it to be) is very chaste.

Little can be said in praise of the last of the English productions. Anapæstics do not appear to suit this writer so well as the more solid metres; or perhaps it is the flippancy of the subject which is not congenial with him. An English anapæstic dimeter may consist either of eleven or twelve syllables, inasmuch as an Iambus is admissible in the first place instead of an anapæst. But eleven is the smallest number possible: Mr. Walpole has one of ten:

Has just learnt to throb with love's pleasing pain.' Where is the person whose ear does not inform him that a syllable is wanting in the middle of the line? The last lines of this poem are very indifferent: Mr. Walpole has contrived to conclude the English part of his effusions lamely and impotently.

But there is an objection to this gentleman's writings, infinitely more serious than any that has yet been hinted at: we mean their tendency; which, it is to be feared, is rather immoral than otherwise. The beginning of one of the old translations from a Latin poet, is so grossly indecent, that the insertion of it calls for our warmest reprehension. It behoved Mr. Walpole to know that not only morality, but taste, does in our times forbid the publication of such bare-faced licentiousness. The days of Charles the Second are no more.

As a poet, our readers will conclude from the foregoing observations, and from the specimens that have been given,that Mr. Walpole has considerable pretensions, at least as far as a judg ment may be formed from translations. If his genius be equal to his taste, we shall not hesitate to put him on a level with the best poets of the present day; but he must allow us to see some of his original compositions, he must give us an opportunity of estimating his fancy and the powers of his mind, before we can We hope, for our own sake and that of the counpronounce.

try, that he will shortly come forward in that line; and that when he does, he will support the reputation of which he now gives so good an earnest. But it must be on a different subject; it must not be in the style of Little. We are apt to imagine, from the warmth with which he writes, that amatory subjects are those which suit him best; we do suspect that he describes feelings which he himself has oft experienced, transactions 'quoruin pars magna fuit;' that

He oft has been in madd'ning hour

Alive to Beauty's magic power;'

that he is no stranger to the kisses of Rosa.' But let him attempt something more important, more dignified, 'Aday, ΑΡΕΤΑΣ δεξ αυτᾶταν οπαδον. It is time that he should cease

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair.'

Besides what we have already remarked upon, the book before us contains a translation from the Spanish of Luis de Leon by Mr. Southey; which, to say the least of it, is not the worst English poem in the collection: a Greek version of the same, by Mr. Walpole: a translation of a scene in Moliere an epitaph on the late amiable and unfortunate Mr. Tweddell: and an ode which obtained sir William Brown's annual medal at Cambridge in the year 1801 :-all in Greek. A short copy of Latin Alcaics makes up the complement of this pleasing little volume. These exercises we must defer noticing at present; a much larger space has already been devoted to Mr. Walpole than is usually allowed to similar publications, and which indeed nothing but his merit would justify. Moreover, the very short time that THE CRITICAL REVIEW has been in our hands, has precluded the possibility of our attending to the above-mentioned articles with that critical accuracy which is due to the importance of classical learning. This circumstance indeed must plead our excuse with a candid and discerning public, for the numerous deficiencies that will doubtless be discovered in this our first Number. As soon as the necessary arrangements can be made, we entertain sanguine hopes that our REVIEW will be conducted in such a manner as to merit the public approbation.

(To be continued.)

ART. VI.-Flim-Flams! or, The Life and Errors of my Uncle, and the Amours of my Aunt! with Illustrations and Obscurities, by Messieurs Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, and an Illuminating Index! 3 Vols. small 8vo. With 9 Plates. 18s. Boards. Murray. 1805.

WE have a claim upon eccentricity for entertainment. Dull whims, like the capers of a dray-horse, provoke the lash. The author of the farrago before us professes himself a member of the Shandean family. He seems to us to have a good deal of the indecency, but no tittle of the wit, of Sterne. The imitation indeed of capricious humour can seldom be successful; always the chief, often the only merit of works of this nature, is their originality. Other styles may be copied, but not that of Sterne. Cumberland, in his Henry,' has followed Fielding with much ability; the company of Dinarbas' does no discredit to its master, although Hawkesworth traces the steps of Johnson as Statius did those of Virgil' sequitur longè, et vestigia semper adorat.' The plan of this author is to ridicule. the most celebrated professors of experimental philosophy, in the character of my Uncle;' whom he describes as running the gauntlet of every art and science, and successively assuming the absurdities of the individuals most distinguished in each pursuit. But he forgets the dignity of the institutions of which these men are members: and directs his indiscriminating satire against improvements of every kind; as well as against those students who, with the best of motives, the increase of their knowledge, have been misled by sanguine imaginations, and occasionally carried their pretensions to improvement, beyond the bounds of practicability. Yet are they not to have their names safely handled with irreverence, by every saucy dabbler in the sciences; which their labours have generally illumined, though they may partially have obscured them.

But this author pretends to expose the licentiousness of the language of amateurs, in every art and science; or, as he barbarously styles them, Philos of any thing. As to the pruriency of these terms of science,-if they are correctly quoted, why are they quoted at all? What is such a reproduction of obscenity, but to recast the Sphintriæ, and to multiply the copies of the books of Elephantis? The sixth satire of Juvenal has not promoted the cause of chastity; nor, to come more closely to the point, can the notes in the Pursuits of 'Literature' upon the metaphorical indecencies in the style of the Dilettanti, and the symbolical models exhibited at their meetings, have any other than a bad effect. The reproof of vice is too often criminal itself.-The last volume of this work

abounds in passages highly exceptionable; nor is the ninth plate by any means free from impurity. A female astronomer is introduced as a substitute for the Widow Wadman,-(this author, we allow, has exactly copied Sterne in the jejuneness of Iris story: except that he has made my Uncle' die in prison in the most shockingly disgusting manner; instead of making his lucubrations, like my Father's,' end in 'a cock and a bull')-to be married to my Uncle;' and her character is used as the vehicle of much gross abuse, particularly of the sister of Dr. Herschel. We surely need not extract any farther proof of low illiberality from the pages of this uncandid writer. He anticipates our censure, and we congratulate him upon this single instance of his sagacity.

The persons alluded to in this book (and it is, as we have shown, most offensive, in personalities) are supposed, in one of the five prefaces, to be either frightened or diverted with it. Why so? There must be power to terrify, and humour to amuse. The consummation of impudence has been defined 'the abuse of one's own practice.' The fifth preface to this book concludes with repeated unmeaning marks of admiration (which disgusted us throughout), stiffly affecting to ridicule the modern art of book-making. These five prefaces, copious contents of chapters, explanations of the plates, blank pages, long mottoes, and illuminating index (as this new expedient to swell a novel is absurdly called), entirely supersede the use of any text; and indeed we could have spared it without a sigh. Hyperbolical irony, explained by the help of italics; pregnant dashes; and ungrammatical punctuation; are unaccountably mistaken by this author for happy ridicule. He opens the Philosophical Transactions; looks out for odd experiments; and, covering himself all over with the 'shreds and patches' of science, comes forward, like a Merry-Andrew, to laugh at his own absurd appearance. The only humorous description in the book is that of my Uncle' and his friends drinking gas. It is copied word. for word from the Pneumatic Revellers,' a poem to be found in the sixth volume of the Anti-Jacobin Review.

That he does not understand his own language, this scribbler shows by making the verb 'to ache' active, with other flagrant faults; that he does not understand Greek, by taking phantasmato be the plural number; that he cannot scan Latin, by his quotation of 'Onoctes cœnæque Divûm!' that he cannot construe it, by his rendering illibatus' blameless. His classical stories are indeed his own: as that of Titus asking Vespasian, if he was not ashamed to levy a certain tax; for the correctness of which account, we refer the reader to the life of T. F. V. in Suetonius, c. 23. But his classical remarks are not so; even the trivial one upon Heyne is stolen from a late