1830.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



Ill 



and Italy, Madeira, and the West Indies, 

 collecting his informations, when his per- 

 sonal knowledge fails, from his medical 

 friends, and persons whose evidence he relies 

 upon. He has chiefly in view diseases of the 

 lungs and the digestive organs ; and as to 

 the former, he ingenuously confesses no be- 

 nefit is to be hoped for from any known 

 change of climate in any of the specific 

 stages of the disease. There are indications 

 of approaching disease, which are probably 

 the disease itself in its incipient state, when a 

 change of scene is found sometimes to be 

 efficient. But at Madeira itself, diseases of 

 the lungs are common. Dr. Clark's book is 

 very intelligibly and sensibly written, and 

 calculated to contribute materially to the im- 

 portant print of medical statistics. 



Introduction to the Study of the Greek 

 Classic Poets, by H. N. Coleridge, Esq. 

 Part L The very useful and intelligible 

 aim of this little publication is. by suggesting 

 sound and eternal principles of criticism, to 

 encourage a free and manly exercise of the 

 judgment upon the productions of the Greek 

 poets of antiquity. These precepts are of a 

 general cast, and applicable alike to old and 

 new, and independent of all that is adven- 

 titious or accidental. Imagination, fancy, 

 good sense, and purity of language, are the 

 characteristics of excellence in all ages and 

 countries. In his general introduction, Mr. 

 Coleridge takes a distinction between fancy 

 and imagination for which Stewart might 

 have envied him. On the principles of 

 Scotch philosophy, meaning the Stewart 

 school, Mr. C. finds them to be two distinct 

 faculties ; though he might with the same 

 reason split what the same school calls the 

 faculty of attention into two or a dozen, ac- 

 cording as the mind is exerted on problems 

 or poems, facts or fables. Queen Mab's 

 equipage is an exercise of pure fancy; the 

 mad scene of Lear and Edgar, one of ima- 

 gination. The first presents objects of na- 

 ture or art as they are mere pictures, to be 

 looked at, but not to be felt for or with. 

 The images of imagination are transfigured, 

 the colours and shapes are modified, as pas- 

 sion mixes with them. He illustrates his 

 meaning by a reference to different sets of 

 similes : those of the fancy are like to the 

 sense, and those of the imagination to the 

 mind's eye. Virgil likens a fair body stained 

 with blood to ivory stained with a purple 

 dye. This is a resemblance to the eye not 

 existing in the nature of the thing. The 

 same poet compares a beautiful boy sud- 

 denly killed to a bright flower rudely cut 

 from its stalk, and withering on the ground. 

 This is a resemblance to the mind not ex- 

 isting in the nature of things. Catullus, in 

 the same way, compares the crush of his 

 love by the infidelity of its object to a flower 

 cut down by the plough. All this, it 

 will be seen, is a distinction founded on the 

 objects of sense, and feelings arising from 

 moral relations, and not resting on distinct 



mental faculties. They are merely classes 

 of objects, and the mind that contemplates 

 them the same, one and indivisible. 



Homer is of course the poet whose works, 

 genuine or reputed, are discussed in the pre- 

 sent volume. Mr. C. inclines to Heyne's 

 conclusion as to the origin of the Iliad, and 

 aptly adds 



There are thousands of old Spanish romances on 

 the Cid, and the heroes of Roncesvalles, undoubt- 

 edly the productions of various authors, which yet 

 might be arranged in order, and set out as several 

 heroic poems, with as little discrepancy between 

 them in style and tone of feeling as can be perceived 

 in the rhapsodies of the Iliad. The same may be 

 said, with even more obvious truth, of the ancient 

 English ballads on Robin Hood and his famous 

 band. We know that these little poems are from 

 different hands ; yet I defy any critic to class them 

 under different heads, distinguishable by any differ- 

 ence of thought or feeling. 



The Odyssey, Mr. C. considers, on the 

 general tone of the thing, and on divers small 

 particulars, as the production of a later age 

 in a different state of society one of advanc- 

 ing refinement. We doubt if this is not 

 refining. The scenes of the Odyssey are 

 chiefly domestic, while those of the Iliad are 

 on the battle field: the heroes are in tem- 

 porary huts, at a distance from domestic ac- 

 commodations, and in a situation adverse to 

 domestic habits. The age, we think, might 

 very well be the same; the difference con- 

 sists only in scenes and circumstances. The 

 hymns, usually assigned, for want of another 

 name, to Homer, though ancient, do not 

 correspond in theology with the principles 

 of the Iliad; and the frogs and mice are 

 evidently of a later period, that of Aristo- 

 phanes probably. 



We are glad to find a gentleman like 

 Mr. C., engaged in an active and laborious 

 profession, one often alien from the muses,, 

 turn with pleasure to the studies of his youth, 

 and bring a cultivated and matured intellect 

 to bear upon imaginative matters. 



Cabinet Cyclopedia, vol. VII. ; Cities 

 and Towns. This seventh volume professes 

 to be the first of three, devoted to a descrip- 

 tion of the <{ cities and principal towns of 

 the world ;" and very much dissatisfied we 

 are, not so much with what is done, as at 

 what is left undone. The volume must be 

 taken as a specimen of the geographical de- 

 partment of the Cyclopaedia ; and it obviously 

 does not accord with the large professions of 

 the editor. According to his announcements, 

 the Cyclopaedia is to " embrace every sub- 

 ject necessary for a work of general re- 

 ference, and, moreover, all the conveniences 

 of alphabetical arrangement," &c. The 

 volume before us, however, will serve none 

 of the purposes of a work of reference, for 

 no one can guess what specifically he is likely 

 to find. The title expresses Cities a word 

 which with us is definite ; or at least every 

 episcopal see is a city, if every city be not an 

 episcopal see. But of English cities, only 

 eleven, we believe, are noticed, and certainly 



