A404 
disfigured without losmg their interest.” 
So far T agree with the poet; who seems 
to understand the real value of the rules 
of his art, too well to think himself 
obliged in all cases to follow them. 
He farther observes, “* 1 shall enter 
into no discussion on, the nature of the 
€popea, nor attemp: to prove, by any la- 
titude of reasoning, that L have written 
an epic poem.” Neither will I enter 
into such a discussion; but I must ap- 
ply to the present work the sentiment of 
Addison, with regard to Paradise Lost, If 
it is not an epic poem, it is something 
better. 
Mr. Barlow has dealt freely with my- 
thological and allegorical personages; se~ 
veral of whom take conspicuous parts in 
the conduct of affairs. Hesper, as the 
guardian genius of the Western Continent, 
is made to play a great role; the conti- 
nent is called after his name, Hesperia; 
and from the part he acts, he must be 
considered at Jeast the second character 
in the poem. He is introduced near the 
beginning, and continues to the end ; and 
there is no personage but Columbus whose 
existence seems so incorporated with the 
pbody of the work. Atlas, the guardian 
of Africa, is the elder brother of Hesper, 
according to the account of this mytho- 
logical family which the author gives us, 
inznote. Atlas appears but once in the 
course of the action; and it is tu present 
us with as sublime a set of images as we 
have ever met with in poetry, including 
in his speech a most awful denunciation 
of vengeance on the people of America, 
for the slavery of the Africans. These 
two brothers,with several river-gods, and 
the demons of War, Cruelty, Inquisi- 
tion, Frost, Famine, and Pestilence, eom- 
pose the celestial actors who take charge 
of the hyperphysical part of the machi- 
nery. 
The human characters are mostly real 
and known, some few of them fictitious ; 
they are I believe more numerous than 
those employed in any other poem, not 
excepting the Iliad; and they are as 
much varied as the subject requires, _ 
I will now proceed in my dissection 
or decomposition of the work. After 
a proper exordium and invocation to 
Freedom, a personage which the poet 
takes for his Muse, and promises to in- 
voke no other, the peem opens by pre- 
senting us Columbus in prison at Val- 
ladolid, uttering a pathetic monologue 
on the services he had _ performed 
for the Spanish monarch, and on the 
ungrateful and barbarous manoer in 
Observations ‘dn the Columbiad. 
[Dec. 1, 
which they had been rewarded. © In 
this situation Ilesper appears to the illus- 
trious prisoner, and announces himself 
as the genius of the western hemisphere, 
and guardian of that continent, which he 
says is called Hesperia, but for the future 
shall be Columbia; as Europe was named 
after its adventurous discoverer, ‘the 
daughter of Agenor, who first sailed thi- 
ther from Phoenicia. 
The apprpach of Hesper is attended 
with the splendour and eclat suitable to 
the occasion ; light bursts into the dun- 
geon; the prison walls tremble, and dis- 
appear; and after a short address to Co- 
lumbus, announcing his quality, and the 
object of his visit (which is no less than 
to lay before him the immense impor- 
tance of his labours in the long train of 
consequences, to shew him what fame he 
is to acquire, and to recal to his broken 
spirit the great mcral principle, that the 
knowledge of the good we do is the only 
reward that can satisfy a benevolent mind 
for the sacrifices that great actions re- 
quire), he conducts the hero to the 
mount of vision, which is reared in mid- 
sky over the western coast of Europe. 
Hiere Spain with its dungeons, Europe 
with all its kingdoms, Alps and Pyrenees, 
sink far behind and beneath their feet ; 
while the Atlantic Ocean spreads out be- 
fore them, and the continents of America 
draw majestically into view. The rest 
of the first book is occupied in deseribing 
the great features of the twin continents 
of that hemisphere, south and north. It 
may now be said that the mountains and 
rivers of the new world have been better 
sung than those of the old. In deserib- 
ing the three great rivers, Maragnon, 
Lawrence, and Mississippi, on each of 
which I find fifty or sixty lines, there is 
a remarkable variety of scenery and sen- 
tment, no recurrence to the same ideas, 
no confusiun of character in their majes- 
tic streams. They are all animated, but 
their several portraits are kept as distinct 
as those of Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses; 
no part of any one of which would suit 
either of the otbers. Maragnon is pre- 
sented in the act of overflowing ‘his 
banks; after collecting from a vast range 
of continent the number of powerful r- 
vers, who seem proud of becoming tribu- 
tary to so great a fluvial sovereign, he 
thus continues his progress :— 
“¢ Who, swell’d with growing conquest, 
wheels abroad, , 
Drains every land, and gathers all his flood; 
Then far from clime to clime majestic goes, 
Enlarging, widening, deepening as he flows ; 
; Like, 
