16 PRESUMPTUOUS POETRY. 



certainly does not lack something which will stand him in good stead 

 in the common affairs of life that is to say, self-conceit. 



Mr. Heraud appears to have taken it into his head for how it got 

 there, unless he took it in out of pure charity, we are at loss to con- 

 ceive that he is a great genius. He does not leave us to find it 

 out that were, perhaps, to give us too much trouble ; but he flatly 

 tells us so in several parts of his poem. This idea is constantly in 

 his mind, and seems to have lain there for many years, to have 

 grown with his growth and strengthened with his strengh ; so that, what 

 with clawing all the books together he could lay his hands upon ; sud- 

 denly bolting all the matters to be found therein, whether farinaceous 

 or such as might perplex the digestive functions of an ostrich, and 

 fancying what a fine thing it would be to be thought a second Mil- 

 ton, Mr. Heraud has at length completed an epic poem in twelve 

 books. 



The Judgment of the Flood is a poem, as nearly as conveniently 

 may be, of the same length as Milton's Paradise Lost, the latter hav- 

 ing the advantage by about one hundred and sixty lines. " It will 

 be found to commence and terminate in vision ;" and the method 

 adopted is a that of a circle returning into itself ;" on the authority, 

 it seems, of Shakspeare, who says 



" We are such stuff > 

 As dreams are made of, and our little life 

 Is rounded with a sleep." 



This argument is as good for never getting up to read Mr. Heraud's 

 poem, as it is for deciding the plan of it ; and for the method adopted, 

 viz. that of a circle returning into itself, it is some German contri- 

 vance that we wot not of. 



The poem comprehends a period of more than two hundred and 

 thirty years, commencing with the death of Jared, and concluding 

 with the entrance of Noah into the ark. The extreme scantiness of 

 the materials upon which to found an epic poem, to be found in the 

 book of Genesis, has led Mr. Heraud to refer to the apocryphal book 

 of Enoch, translated by Dr. Laurence, to which frequent allusions 

 are made, and from whence many of the characters are drawn. 



We cannot approve of the fiction by which Enoch is made to enter 

 up into the Mount for the purpose of receiving the tables of the law, 

 thereby heightening the sin of the antediluvian world, to whom no 

 commandments, direct from the Almighty, were, as we are taught 

 to believe, ever issued at all. Still less do we approve the retro- 

 spective effect of these commandments, as shewn upon ten unfortu- 

 nate individuals whom Enoch selects for that purpose. " Behold," 

 says he, 



" The tables of the law of the Most High, 

 The decalogue of Heaven. God's finger graved 

 Each statute on the consecrated stone. 

 Hither, thou trembling sinner. ' Stand thou forth, 

 And answer for thy sin. What God is thine?' 

 And he who thus was called upon replied, 

 ' I bow the knee unto the teraphim, 

 And they have answered me, and made me rich 



