568 
Enough notes are added to eke out 
the little volume adeigs pages: they are 
designed to illustrate the local allusions. 
The re-appearance, after twenty years, 
of such assingle solitary trifle as this, is 
soméwhat curious ; and when we observe 
POETRY. 
that its resurrection was made at Glotie 
cester, it reminds us of the poor Ameri- 
can fly, who was sent across the Atlantic 
in a bottle of Madeira, and revived by 
the sun-beams just to flutter and die in 
another country. : 
Arr. XXIX. * Syr Reginaldes or, the Black Tower: a Romance of the Twelfth Century. 
With Tales, and other Poems. By E. W. Brayrey and W. Hexyverr. 12mo, 
pp- 170. 
IN this worthless volume there is one 
éxtrdordinary extract from Jackson’s 
State of the Defunct, which, for its 
oddity, deserves to be re-extracted. 
«© An acquaintance of mine, an Oxford 
scholar, hath, to wy certain knowledge and 
belief, cured many disorders, and laid the 
ghosts of many disturbed people, when no 
other person could do them. In a village 
where I lived, I do know that there was a 
great house, a mansion-house, haunted by 
a spirit that turned itself into a thousand 
shapes and forms, but generally came in the 
shape of a boiled serag of mutton, and had 
bafed and defied the learned men of both 
universities ; but this being told to my friend, 
who was a descendant and relation of the 
Jearned Friar Bacon, he undertook to lay it, 
and that even without his books ; and it was 
done in this manner: he ordered some water 
to be put into aclean skillet, that was new, 
and had never been on the fire. When 
Art. XXX. Rhapsodies by W. H. Inevann, ‘Author 
8vo, pp. 200. 
«© AS on thy title page, poor little book! 
Full oft I cast a sad and pensive look, 
I shake my head, and pity thee ; 
For J, alas! no brazen front possess, 
Nor do I ev'ry potent art stele: 
To send thee forth from censure free.” 
We must own that this title page 
leads us to a very different conclusion, 
and.convinces us that the writer does 
ossess a brazen front. ‘* Rhapsodies 
y W. H. Ireland, author of the Shak- 
sperian MSS.’ We should willingly 
have suffered Mr. W. H. Ireland to pass 
by, even though he had not had the de- 
cency to hide himself under some alias, 
but when he chuses to remind us of a 
fraud, that evinced as total a want of all 
feeling of excellence, all reverence for 
genius, as it did of all common honesty, 
we cannot but observe that the face 
which forms the frontispiece to the vo- 
Jume would have appeared with more 
propriety in the pillory. ; 
‘These rhapsodies are like all Mr. 
Treland’s former verses, 2 mixture of 
the water boiled, he himsclf pulled off his 
hat and shoes, and then took seven turnips, 
which he pared with a small pen-knife that 
had been rubbed and whetted on aloadstone, 
and put them into the water. When they 
were boiled, he ordered some butter to be 
melted in a new glazed earthen pipkin, and 
then mashed the turtiips in it. Just as this 
was finished,’ I myself saw the ghost, in the 
form of a boiled scrag of mutton, peep in at 
the window, which I gave him notice ‘of, 
and he stuck his fork into him, and soused 
both him and the turnips into a pewter dish, 
and eat both up. And the house was ever 
after quiet and still. Now this I should not 
have believed, or thought true, but I stood 
by and saw the whole ceremony perform- 
ed}! i” 
This story has. been indifferently ver- 
sified. Having extracted the prose nar- 
rative, we have cut the jewel out of the 
head of the toad. 
of the Shaksperian MSS. &c. 
old phraseology and modern barbarisms. 
A short specimen will suffice. 
“* Ah, willow, willow ! droop with me, 
Still bend thy verdant head, 
For I have lost my own true love, 
Ah! wherefore is she fled ? 
Sad willow tree, 
She’s gone from me, 
So, willow, I will weep with thee. 
«© The silver stream which bathes thy root, 
Is emblem of my heart, 
It gently murmurs as it glides ; 
I moan love's cruel sinart. 
So willow weep, 
When cold I sleep, 
And shade me in the grave full deep. 
‘« For round thee still the breeze shall moan ; 
Thou still wilt droop thine head, 
And, weeping, shade the friendly turf 
That shrouds me when i'm dead. 
“So, willow tree, 
_ [il sit by thee, 
Thou soother of my misery.” 
The ballads are the best pieces, if best 
bean allowable epithet to pieces of 
which none are good. . 
