44d 
absurdities of this volume. We have not 
aimed our shafts at ‘‘ Herban’” alone. There 
is a school, at present, in some vogue, that 
is deluging the press with inundations of 
such oglittering and! unmeaning incongrui- 
ties as:this poem abounds with—not im- 
properly called the Cockney School—the 
school’ of those who pastoralize in the 
smoke of London, and plant their gardens 
of Parnassus with Covent-Garden bough- 
pots.’ We consider the author of Herban’s 
to be an extreme case of this deranged pro- 
pensity to outrage common sense, in the 
slandered names of the Muses; and we have 
put the law in force against him as an ex- 
ample to the rest: but there are some of 
those who haye not fallen under our juris- 
diction, who, if they had happened to have 
been brought into our court for any new 
offence, might have chanced not to ‘be 
treated with much more lenity. 
The Fruits of Faith, or Musing Sinner, 
with Elegies and other Moral Poems. By 
Hvuew Campett, of the Middle Temple, 
Illustrator of Ossian’s Poems. 12mo.—A 
few specimens of Dr. H. C. in prose and 
verse, have satisfied us, and we dare say 
will satisfy our readers also. The preface 
thus begins ;— 
“ The first of the following trifles was written for 
The Religious Tract Society, to which I sent it for 
the purpose of being published and circulated before 
the memorable Crisis in National or Religious In- 
disposition, or rather during Britain’s lethargic state 
of Moral Torpidity, whilst the virulence of the Dis- 
ease, named Scepticism, was working its dark and 
baneful way to the vitals of Society, until it was 
roused and quickened into action, life, and energy, 
by the Cato Street Conspiracy.” 
Here we are posed a little at the very 
threshold. What was it that the Cato 
Street Conspiracy roused and quickened 
into action, life and energy ?—Society !— 
“Really we were not at all aware that society 
had derived any such obligations from so 
detestable a source. Or, was it scepticism 
that was so roused and quickened and ener- 
gized? Ifwe cannot find the antecedent of 
the sentence, however, we can find the 
nonsense. But Mr. C. complains that he 
is \“‘ not aware that his humble mite thus 
‘east, into the Treasury,’ came out pub- 
lished.”’. A mite coming out published!!! 
We commend the critical discrimination of 
the Tract Society, in this instance, at least, 
in not being quite so ready as the author in 
believing that ‘‘ any thing resembling poetry 
in print, is likely to attract the vulgar at- 
tention: or perhaps they might even, be 
so critical as to doubt whether any attention 
could be vulgar enough to suppose that there 
was, any szesemblance to poetry in such 
rhymes as these. 
** Angels of Bethle’m, who, to men, on earth, 
Sung’ Peace and Concord at our Saviour’s birth, 
Once more descend from your empyrean fanes, 
And man allure by Truth’s resistless strains— 
Pour on.each: darken’d soul the stream of light 
And rays ef Hope, as on that hallow’d night, 
Monthly Review of Literature, , 
[Dec.'I, 
On which the shepherds yrov'd your wondrous pow'r, 
And midnight seem’d like Sol’s meridian hour;” _ 
Or such blank verse as.the following :— 
** Hail, glorious Lord of all! Omnipotence— ,, 
Whom worlds confess as they, reyolying, turn. .,. 
Their never ceasing round. Proclaiming wide Es 
Thy unremitting kindness that first called f 
From dismal Chaos, their unmatter'd orbs. 
10 2xteo 
Unmatter’d orbs!!! . Dismal chaos, in- 
deed! How deplorable it is to see religion 
degraded by such trash! as if cant and jingle 
were all.that was requisite to constitute Di- 
vine poetry! We peeped into the elegies 
and moral poems, but found nothing better 
than a “ proud humble minstrel?’ asking 
his friend ‘‘ Jamie,’’— ; 
“Do you think on the time that by Ayr we did play, 
In the Hall where the true hospitality reigns? 
Has your sweet Catrine-vale got an Ayr running 
by,” &c. &c, : 
The Death of Aguire; Ianthe, a Tale; 
Bodium Castle; Battle Abbey; and other 
Poems. By JoHN Watson Darby. 12mo. 
—Mr. D., through the medium of some 
Spenserian stanzas addressed to — —, 
whose “ fond praise” is the ‘* richest 
meed” and the “ highest praise’ he 
aspires to, thus modestly estimates his 
merits and pretensions— 
** Others may toil for aye-enduring bays: 
Such I deserve not—nor are such my aim.” 
But why then did he publish? If he ex- 
pects no ‘‘ bays” from the public, could he 
not have been content with ——’s “ fond 
praise” in manuscript? seeing that nothing 
is so insufferable as the tedious prosing of 
would-be poetry. 
Forty Years in the World; or, Sketches 
and Tales of a Soldier's Life. By _the 
Author of “ Fifteen Years in India,” “ Me- 
moirs of India,” Sc. &c. &c. 3vols. 12mo. 
—These volumes contain both information 
and amusement : but we suspect that they 
owe quite as much of their very extensive 
popularity to their defects as to their 
merits :—to the glittering tinsel of their 
style, and the meretricious sentimentality 
and other novel-like embellishments, as to 
their pictures of oriental scenery and man- 
ners, and the authentic incidents: with 
which they may be interspersed. . The 
evident intermixture of fiction, or, at least, 
the fiction-like array, in which the: narra~ 
tion comes before us, diminishes our comfis 
dence, even in what we might wish tolre- 
ceive as fact: so that we sometimes donot 
know whether it is through veritable’ India, 
or through a sort of poetie Utopia—a 
flowery region of romance—that we are Jed. 
Nor is it in the style alone (with its affecta- — 
tions of poetic common-places, and: ‘mis-= 
applied and incongruous metaphors)—mnor 
even in the romance-like texture of the 
tales and sketches, that we pereeivethe 
symptoms of a doubtful fidelity.'; Dhere 
are apparent biases on ) the » mind tof ithe 
author in favour of certain things as-they 
are, that. justify -a .suspi¢ion,.. thats ithe 
sketches 
