350 
uncertainty.” Among whom, we wouldask? 
Among the toothless gossips of Protestant 
nurseries ; and the ingenuous youth who de- 
rive their historical knowledge and theolo- 
gical feelings from such enlightened chroni- 
clers. His poetry partakes of the same in- 
spiration. Addressing the imperial Exile, 
he says 
«© By thee was Satan’s viceroy captive led, 
Whom fools called Pope, while frantic bigots fled. 
Thy sun hath set: and lo! the papal beast, 
Famished of late, resumes his horrid feast.” 
To shew that he can be as tastefully sub- 
lime in his admiration, as he is temperate 
and decorous in his reprehensions, take the 
following quotation—quite as favourable a 
specimen of the poetic talent of Mr. H. S. 
Boyd as we have been able to select; and 
in which it will be found that he not only 
turns the sun info a she gas-lamp, and the 
Emperor Napoleon into a lamplighter, but 
makes a thousand of sects (really we did not 
not know there were quite so many !) re- 
joice in the blaze of the sway of the said 
lighted lamp. Such at least appears to he 
the nearest approximation towards any- 
thing like grammatical construction, of, 
which this superlative assemblage of meta- 
phorical phraseology is susceptible ;— 
unless, indeed, the poet may be considered 
as haying put Toleration in a blaze, which, 
considering the fiery nature of his zeal for 
her, may not be quite improbable : 
« Did pure religion move thy willing breast, 
“To give the Church of Christ one common rest 
Through all thy boundless realm, and closely tie 
The golden chords of Christian amity ? 
Q! if her hallowed precepts swayed thy mind, 
I hail thee, noblest, best of human kind, 
But say thy foes, ’twas policy. Why then 
I deem thee wisest of created men. 
To light the sun of Toleration’s day, 
And bid th’ admiring world behold her sway ; 
See thousand sects rejoicing in her blaze, 
Pealing one anthem of symphonious praise, 
Were sapient, glorious, Godlike polity ! 
But who embraced it, cherished it, like thee? 
There thou hast no compeer: no rival brother, 
Mid kings, mid emperors: who can name another ? 
In another very pious effusion, ‘‘ On the 
Spiritual Improvement of a Friend,” we 
shave some further illustration of the grace- 
ful and appropriate application of double 
shymes— 
** If now thou revel in that book of beauty. 
How great thy joy, when Christian faith and duly 
Shed their pure influence o'er thy taste and feeling, 
Unnoticed charms, unknown delights revealing / 
Whether the cockneyism of the following, 
from Mr, Boyd’s specimen of a new trans- 
Jation of the Georgics, be meant for a dou- 
ble or a single rhyme, we must refer to the 
decision of the classical orthoepists of White 
Chapel: 
*« And Hebrus and Actian Ori-thyia, 
‘voc He) striking deep and slow his hollow lyre.” 
® “Gonzalo and other Poems, 12mo.—The 
‘atithor tells us im his preface, that his “youth 
“nay give hope of progressive improvement, 
Monthly Review of Literature, 
[Noy. I, 
unless, indeed, this, his first juvenile effort, 
be crushed by undue criticism.” After such 
an appeal lest our criticism should be undue, 
we will not criticize at all—we will only 
quote ; and, after stating that the anecdote 
which the author relates, as having suggest- 
eda part of this story of Gonzalo, is poetical 
enough, leave the reader, to judge of the 
execution. 10": booed 
** But as he left the raging seajjy © 6 y)\>) 
Which storm’d in fell impotency,, . . »» 
A female figure gave her hand, 
And bade him welcome to the land: 
He felt her warm and glowing heat, 
He saw her bare and bloody feet— 
For she had wander’d o’er the plain, 
Seeking a friend among the slain. 
Her eyes like sparkling pearls were set, 
Rounded with balls of blackest jet, 
Bright diamonds in a minaret.” 
** She leant upon his willing arm, 
When lo, the blind bird’s ev’ning song 
Struck terror to Gonzalo’s heart : 
Away he broke like wounded hart, 
Or panting and pursued deer 
Whose swift feet swifter ran from fear. 
She follow’d as on seraph’s wing, 
Or like some cherub, on the string 
Of new-born perfect harmony.” 
If the reader should not happen to like 
this well enough to pursue the tale through 
sixty-eight pages, he may turn to the smaller 
poems. ‘The first we fall upon, in turning 
over the leaves, is what is called a “ Son- 
net on Harmony,” but which consists of 
seven elegiac stanzas. We present the 
first. 
“ Where is the breast that harmony won’t move, 
From which seraphic sounds draw not a sigh ? 
Who has a heart full proof against that love, 
Which flows divinely down with sympathy ?” 
We cannot say that there is nothing bet- 
ter im the volume, for we plead guilty to the 
charge of not having read it through. 
An Apology for ‘‘ Don Juan,” a Satirical 
Poem, Second Edition. To which are added, 
Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron, and 
other Poems. Cr. 8v0.—This, though it has 
come to a second edition, is what may be 
called poetry for the day. It has nearly had 
its day, and it can expect no more. It owed 
its attraction to its subject and its object, 
more than to its execution. Its aim was 
laudable, undoubtedly—to administer to the 
public taste an antidote to the moral poi- 
son mingled, it must be confessed, with too 
much freedom with the power and brilliancy 
of Lord Byron’s writings. And who would 
not have rejoiced to have seen Byron’s im- 
moralities encountered by a morality equally 
splendid and poignant ? But things may be 
wished that cannot be hoped. The author 
attempts to accomplish this by a vein’ of 
irony; but to pursue such a vein through a 
series of between two and three thousand 
lines, without intervention of the soporific, 
would reguire very extraorditiary” endow- 
ments. We confess that our,eyes Wwete heavy 
more than once, before the author had got 
, ah 
