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MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



A VISION OF FAIR SPIRITS, AND OTHER POEMS. BY JOHN GRAHAM* 

 OP WADHAM COJ^EGE. LONDON AND OXFORD, 1834. 



WK feel no slight difficulty in expressing an opinion of the small 

 volume of poems now before us, which shall at once mark our sense 

 of the attainments of the author, and our distrust of his poetical 

 powers. We are aware that the public has been so long accustomed 

 to indifferent poetry, and that a great portion of our modern poetical 

 readers are so scantily endowed with taste to relish or to appreciate a 

 higher order of genius, that we are fearful of wounding the self-love 

 of our author by a lukewarm recommendation of him to those from 

 whom he has, perhaps, good reason to expect a favourable reception ; 

 at the same time that we recognize a lurking inclination in ourselves 

 to inculcate, as far as we are able, a better and a purer taste. 



We find, however, that we must state our opinion of this volume, 

 and of productions like these, plainly and strongly. It must no longer 

 be borne, that the coldly correct^ or, rather, the tame mediocrity- 

 school, shall find place amongst us. Another great poet has gone to 

 his grave very much as his precftfcessors have gone and in this en- 

 lightened age (" dark with excess of light," we fear), a Rogers has 

 eclipsed a Coleridge. Must this disgraceful imputation upon our 

 taste continue ? No. 



This volume, then, contains no poetry. The verse is smooth so 

 smooth, indeed, that it, and all that in it is, slips through the mind 

 incontinently fraught with no ideas exciting no thought leaving 

 no impression. 



The principal poem, which is called " A Vision of Fair Spirits," is 

 a very poor performance, made up of mythological mumblings, and 

 obscure mouth-worship of certain ladies and gentlemen, of whom 

 Tooke's Pantheon furnishes a concise, and, happily for bards, an 

 easily accessible account. To the reader, initiated in the mysteries 

 of modern verse manufacture, it may be sufficient to state that the 

 word " spell" occurs about as often as usual, and that it is to be found 

 at the end of the line, where its magic power in suggesting a rhyme 

 has created for it extreme popularity. 



Who does not shudder when he beholds a prize poem ? Mr. 

 Graham has printed his. It is called " Granada," and is treated after 

 the old fashion of doing these things at our universities. And here it 

 were a curious inquiry how or by whom are prize poems made? 

 They cannot be written by several individuals. There must be an 

 elegant old twaddler his name is Ibid kept for the purpose his 

 animal economy sustained by a daily ration of boiled veal and batter- 

 pudding. He has done them all since Heber's " Palestine," and had 

 a hand in that poem. He must have written these lines in " Gra- 

 nada ;" but the old gentleman forgets how often we have seen them 

 before. 



