134 
With hope the thirsty bosom glow’d, 
And the bow’d head was bent to sip; 
But envious fortune snatch’d away 
The mantling promise of delight: 
O’er-clouded was the genial ray, 
And the sweet dream was put to flight. 
O Mary! is the goblet gone— 
The draught for ever cast away? 
Or is it but a while withdrawn, 
To come more sweeten’d by delay? 
Yes, Mary! yes—that speaking eye 
Tells me the cup again shall flow: 
And bless’d occasion shall supply 
The mutual bliss we pant to know. 
From the circumstances of Mr. Thel- 
wall’s life, it might naturally be ex- 
pected that the political effusions would 
be among the best in this volume. 
Feeling, as we do, the greatest respect 
for the author’s sufferings and exertions 
in the cause of freedom, we are yet 
obliged, as impartial critics, to say, 
that this does not appear to us to be the 
case, perhaps because our expectations 
were too highly excited; but we ra- 
ther suspect the true cause is to be 
found in the conformation of Mr. Thel- 
wall’s mind, which appears to us of too 
beneyolent and philanthropic a kind, 
too much imbued with “ the milk of 
human kindness,” to be susceptible, 
unless on very rare occasions, of suffi- 
cient velhemence for the purposes of a 
party writer. The collection, however, 
furnishes two splendid exceptions to the 
above remarks, which we shall here 
transcribe. The first is an ode to the 
Maratists, written in 1793. 
Eternal curses wait his crime,— 
The monster whose atrocious hand 
(When freedom’s patriot soul sublime 
Would vindicate an injur’d land) 
First lifts, with thirst of slaughter fir’d, 
The assassin’s steel, and headlong leads 
The frantic crowd to desperate deeds!— 
The frantic crowd, by rage inspir’d, 
Who, when the indignant spirit flames, 
With Freedom’s or Religious zeal, 
Too oft pollute those sacred names, 
And rush on deeds which heaven dis- 
claims, 
And shuddering virtue scorns to own: 
Deeds that in savage horror vie 
With those that prop the Despot’s throne, 
Or Priestcraft’s sable vesture die : 
Deeds that the noblest cause profane, 
And sully Freedom’s holy train. 
The other piece is a Sonnet to Ty- 
ranny, written during the author’s con- 
finement in the Tower. 
O Hell-born Tyranny! how blest the land 
Whose watchful Citizens with dauntless 
breast 
Oppose thy first approach! 
With aspect 
bland : 
News from Parnassus..No. XV. 
[March J, 
Thou wont, alas! too oft, to lull to rest 
The sterner virtues that should guard the 
throne 
Of Liberty. Deck’d with the gaudy zone 
Of Pomp, and usher’d with lascivious arts 
Of glossing Luxury, thy fraudful smile 
Ensnares the dazzled senses, till our hearts 
Sink, palsied, in degenerate lethargy. 
Then bursts the swoln destruction forth ; 
and while 
Down the rough tide of Power, Oppression 
drives 
The shipwreck’d multitude, no hope sur- 
vives, . 
But from the whelming storm of Anarchy. 
In some parts of the Recreations, we 
find attempts, most of them by pupils 
of Mr. Thelwall’s, at English Sapphics ; 
and he has himself introduced an essay 
on the subject, in which he contends 
for the admission of the antient mea- 
sures into our own language, as being 
not only practicable, but very desirable 
additions to our metrical resources. It 
is with no small degree of regret that 
we feel ourselves compelled to differ 
from Mr. T. in toto, upon this subject. 
We consider English poetry to be 
abundantly rich in all that is necessary 
for the purposes of harmony, without 
having recourse to far-fetched, and 
very equivocal sources of improvement. 
We are fully aware of aJ] that:has been 
urged by partisans on both sides of the 
question, about accent and quantity, 
aud what has sometimes, by rather 
an aukward epithet, been termed poese. 
But though these distinctions may be 
considered as very: satisfactorily esta- 
blished by those who have invented 
them, we fear they have not inany in- 
stance been made sufficiently clear to 
become palpable to persons wholly ig- 
norant of the dead languages. It~has 
never been our good fortune to meet 
with a mere English scholar, who 
could be made to feel the harmony of 
an English sapphic or hexameter, much 
less to construct one. And this cir- 
cumstance is, in our opinion, a strong 
presumption that such metres are ano- 
malous to our language; for we con- 
sider that on this subject the sentiment 
of a person wholly unacquainted with 
the ancient tongues, must be-of far more 
weight than that of a proficient in 
them. The latter, from the influence 
of association of ideas, may frequently 
imagine that he perceives in the imita- 
tions of Latin and Greek metres, a 
modulation and harmony which do not 
in reality exist ; just as when listening 
to the tune of a well known song, 
though played only upen an instru- 
ment 
