552 
Ballads, may be prevented from reading 
them by the contempt which he has thus 
expressed. The miserable vantiy which 
tempted this gentleman to build his own 
fame upon another’s merits, to piiler the 
reputation of a contemporary, to plume 
his own magpye tail with the feathers 
of the bird of paradise, this wretched 
craving for notoriety would have deserv- 
ed no heavier punishment than the con- 
tempt and scorn which necessarily would 
follow detection ; but this other offence 
Arr. VII. 
OF all the volumes which come before 
Us, there are none which we take up so 
hopelessly.as these little fools-cap octavos 
Of wire-wove paper, hot pressed. We 
sit down heartlessly and reluctantly to 
examine the works of a new candidate 
for poetical fame, taught by the doctrine 
of chances and by sad experience to ox- 
pect something which we cannot ho- 
nestly praise, and yet should be unwil- 
ling to condemn. In the present age 
every pretender to poetry can versity 
well, and many a vciume, which now 
sinks quietly into oblivion, would have 
acquired no trifling celebrity in the days 
of Dryden and Pope, or even at the com- 
mencement of the present reign. But it 
requires something more now to qualify 
a writer for a place among the British 
poets, than was admitted by our fore- 
fathers as a qualification. Reputation 
may be acquired by striking defects as 
well as striking beauties, but dullness 
and mediocrity have now no chance or 
possibility of success. 
It is, therefore, with no common plea- 
sure that we announce these extraordi- 
nary productions of early genius. It 
will require some faith in the reader to 
believe, that the following Ode was writ- 
ten by a boy of thirteen. 
« To an carly Primrose. 
«« Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire! 
Whose modest Ban, so delicately fine, 
Was nurs’d in whirling storms 
And cradled in the winds. 
« Thee, when young spring first question’d 
winter’s sway, 
And dar’d the sturdy blust’rer to the fight, 
Thee on this bank he threw 
To mark his victory. 
«< In this low vale, the promise of the year, 
Serene, thou openest to the nipping gale 
Unnotic'd, and alone 
Thy tender elegance. 
Clifton Grove, ‘a She'ch in Verse, with other Poems 
Wuirre, of Nottingham. 
POETRY. 
is of a deeper die. Like a loathsome 
reptile, it is not enough for him to feed 
aud fatten, but he must endeavour to 
sting and to stain with his pollutions. 
‘{he moral turpitude of this action ex- 
cites our wonder and indignation. We 
know not the name which is hidden un- 
der this alias of Peter Bayley ; and happy 
itis for him, that he can be thus conceal- 
ed; but be he whom he may, this we shall 
say of him— 
Hic niger est, hune tu Romane caveto! 
By Henry Kirke 
12mo. pp. 111. 
«So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the 
storms 
Of chill adversity, in some low walk 
Of life, she rears her head 
Obscuye and unobserv’d. 
«© While every bleaching breeze that on her 
blows, 
Chastens her spotless purity of breast, 
And hardens her to bear 
Serene the ills of life.” 
The author of these poems is now only 
seventeen. He shall plead in his own 
cause. 
«The unpremeditated effusions of a boy 
from his thirteenth year, employed, not in 
the acquisition of literary information, but in 
the more active business of life, must not be 
expected to exhibit any considerable portion 
of the correctness of a Virgil, or the more 
vigorous compression of a Horace. Men are 
not, I believe, frequently known to bestow 
much labour on theiramusements; and these 
poems were most of them written merely to 
beaiiie a leisure hour, or to fill up the lan- 
guid intervals of studies of a severer nature. 
“* Tlas to cinews spyoy ayamas: —Fvery 
one loves his own work, says the Stagyrite ; 
but it was no overweening affection of this 
kind which induced this publication. Had 
the author relied on his own judgment only, 
these poems would not, in all probabiliiy, 
ever have seen the light. : t 
«« Perhaps it may be asked of him, what 
are his motives for this publication. He 
answers—simiply these: ‘The facilitation 
through its means of those studies which 
from his earliest infancy have been the prin- 
cipal objects of his ambition; and the in- 
crease of the capacity to pursue those incli- 
nations which may one day place him in a 
honorable station in the scale of society.” 
However desirous we should be, for 
the sake of their future fame, to dissuade 
all young poets from premature publi- 
cation, it is evident that no such pruden- 
tial notions could apply to the present 
mstance. The author has expressed a 
