[ 442 F 
[Dec. 1, 
MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC 
AND FOREIGN. 
i eke 
fagia 
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Authors or Publishers, desirous of seeing an early Notice of their Works;'are 
requested to transmit Copies, if possible, before the 16th of the Month. tise 
——_—=— 
HLERBAN. A Poem in Four Cantos. 8vo. 
—We have here before us one of those 
frequent and unintentional satires against 
the present system of education, which are so 
frequently issuing from the press. Here is 
a young English gentleman, who has the 
classics at his fingers’ ends, but who cannot, 
in yerse or prose, though apparently not 
unpregnant of ideas, write a sentence of 
intelligibie English :—who knows not the 
meaning, apparently, of the words he is 
using; whose constructions defy all pars- 
ing ; whose references have frequently no 
agreement with their antecedents; and 
whose vocabulary, in spite of the copious 
affluence of our speech, is so defective, 
that he cannot make out the jingle of his 
rhymes without the coinage of words which 
we do not want, or the distortion of those 
we have to significations which they never 
owned, and which they cannot bear. 
When ‘a youth of nineteen” sends a 
poem, of nearly four thousand lines, into 
the world, “ written during the leisure 
hours of a month or six weeks,” we do not, 
of course, put on our critical spectacles, in 
the expectation of finding ‘ many beauties 
‘and few blemishes ;”’ and, certainly, to ex- 
pect any thing like the compressive energy 
and polished elegance of genuine poetry, 
would be the very acmé of unreasonableness 
and absurdity: though certainly we have 
known instances in which flashes of genius 
and of future promise have been met with 
in the crude mass of such hasty prema- 
turities; and instances, also, in which 
some portions of the like vanity and 
presumption of boyhood have been re- 
deemed by the corrected judgment and more 
authorized confidence of riper years. Such 
may, for aught” we know, be the future 
destiny of the juvenile author of “ Her- 
ban ;”” but we will tell him that, if ever it is 
to be so, he has his education to begin again. 
It certainly will not be, so long as he can 
imagine that in such sentences as the fol- 
lowing he expresses his own meaning : 
“¢ Feeling fully sensible of the regularity, harmony 
and scheme which may, in too many places, be found 
wanting, he has felt somewhat timid in submitting 
it to the perusal of a public, who, though generous 
with eandour, are justly solicitous for the reputation 
of their literature.” 
If the author was really fully sensible of 
regularity, harmony and scheme, why did 
he suffer them to be wanting? If we can 
puzzle out his meaning at all, his sentence 
should have run thus :— 
Feeling fully sensible that the regularity, 
harmony and scheme [plan we should haye 
preferred] which such a poem requires, will, 
in too many places, be found wanting, he 
has felt somewhat timid in submitting, it to 
the public, who, though generous and can- 
did, are justly solicitous about the eputagion 
of their literature. 
He goes on, however, in the same style; 
“* Poetry, it is accepted [admitted], should need 
no Preface.”—‘‘ The Author sends forth Herban in 
(with) all his failings, with no recommendation but 
himself and his fortunes.” 
“ And he himself is his own parallel !?’ 
The author courts the remarks of ‘ im- 
partial reviewers.’’—‘‘ Others, who make 
it their business to cavil at, instead of eri- 
ticize, [to cavil, instead of criticising —or 
to cavil- at, instead of to criticise] and to 
ridicule, instead of reform ling, or rather 
than to reform] the publications of the day, 
he neither considers worthy of notice nor 
fear.” 
In which of the classes the author will 
set us down, it may not be difficult to con- 
jecture. But though we must Jeave the 
task of “reforming publications’ to the 
editors of new and improved editions,—we 
must think it our duty, when, in eyery sen- 
tence of a short preface, we find such Eng- 
lish as this, to endeavour to reform the 
taste and the grammatical perceptions of 
authors, whether we be called cayillers 
or not. 
Of course we are not to expect more 
accurate coherency in the yerse than in the 
prose. In the dedicatory stanza that in- 
troduces the volume, we find the poet thus 
addressing himself to his mother :— 
«To thee | 
Whose Jove fir'st lov'd me, and whose tears first fell, 
Ere yet I learn’d thy lisping name to speak.” 
So that it was the name that lisped, not the 
child! This is but a sorry invitation. te 
the critic to proceed. We did, howeyer, 
proceed through nineteen Spenserian stan- 
zas—(all, we confess, out of three hundred 
and sixteen, with which “in a month or 
six weeks” the author’s brain had teemed, 
which we had the patience to read. In 
the course of these, however, we, met, 
(stanza I.) with an ‘‘ unwonted swain,’’ in- 
voking the “‘ Muse of the Bard!” and who, 
“while pacing, guideless, the poetic plain,” 
not satisfied with one muse, calls for a - 
—‘ And come, Melpomene,, to hee 
lowly strain,’—in Stanza IT., wip 
endless knoll’’ of waters, “ that fir 
reverence ;” and “frothy mount ie 3 in ve 
abyss,” that “ foam with horrid hi st ij 
‘waves more ‘gtandly drear’* “tie - 
in, beauteous crescent :” in’ Stanza : 
“the splash” that “ heard the ‘erash,”” an 
a 'rainbe oe 
“an 
