MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 461 



THE DOCTRINES OF MAN. BY ROBERT MILLHOUSE. LONDON. 1832, 



WE are not of those who conceive that because a tailor turns his attention to 

 rhyme he must therefore be a natural genius ; or that there is any thing very 

 extraordinary in the fact that cobblers write verses in these times. The elements 

 of the English language acquired, and the composition of verse is equally open 

 to all. 



The marvel then (if there be any cause of wonder at all) when a poem like 

 the one before us is produced, is not that Robert Millhouse, a Nottingham wea- 

 ver, should have written poetry, but that he should have possessed sufficient 

 energy of mind to overcome the circumstances with which he has been sur- 

 rounded. Genius is not aristocratical ; and, a Millhouse is a better poet than 

 my lord. 



If the poem before us were of the common order ; if there were no evidences 

 of genius in it ; if it were, in short, " very tolerable, and not to be endured," 

 we should feel it our duty to discourage the author from proceeding in a vexa- 

 tious course of labour which usually brings with it more trouble and anxiety 

 than profit or pleasure. We are unlike Mr. Southey we do not choose to en- 

 courage some great obscure, because his lucubrations should rather tend to keep 

 him in obscurity ; nor do we think that the itch for rhyme is in itself a merito- 

 rious sensation. We rather imagine that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 

 verse writing is another of the many resorts of vanity, and is pretty much on a 

 par with the cultivation of arranging whiskers the ostentation of inordinate 

 rings, and the careful negligence of the shirt collar. 



But our friend Millhouse is a man of the right stamp. He has a spark of 

 the flre in his breast, and it is our duty, no less than our inclination, to help to 

 kindle it into a glowing and equable flame by the breath of our applause. 



" The Destinies of Man," quasi a poetical contrivance has few claims to 

 approbation. It is made up for the most part of reflections upon the works of 

 God, and the doings of human kind, equally illustrative of man's destinies and 

 is carried on without much self-progressive or convulsive motion. But there 

 are several passages indicating real genius, and we present our readers with a 

 specimen which we think will establish that opinion with them. It is a portion 

 of a description of the Deluge so often attempted. 



" What congregated multitudes were there ! 

 Men of five centuries, still fierce in crime ; 

 Those giants of their race, unused to fear, 

 With looks majestical, but not sublime : 

 There matrons old, in nothing grave but time ; 

 And warriors, ardent in the bloom of years ; 

 And virgin beauty, fading in its prime ; 

 And youthful brides, sad wasting in their tears ; 

 And wild despair, and madness, scowling towards the spheres." 



" And there came on, in resistless love of life, 

 Domestic flocks and herds, with hurrying pace ; 

 And beasts of prey, not yet subdued from strife ; 

 The antelope, and roebuck of the chace, 

 Bounding to 'scape from death and in that space, 

 The reptiles crept along the slippery ground ; 

 Or clung to man, with horrible embrace : 

 The vulture, over head, in wheeling round, 

 Screamed ; or alighting fierce, his dying victim found." 



Mr. Millhouse has published his little volume with a view to aid, by its sale, 

 his meritorious but insufficient daily labours for his family and for himself. We 

 call upon the lovers of poetry to do themselves a pleasure and a service by the 

 purchase of this book, and we promise them that they will find much reason to 

 be delighted with a fresh taste of the genuine Heliconin these days of spiri- 

 tuous puriency and Thames water filth. 



