et 
best with philosophy; depression of spirits 
Jeads us to penetrate deeper iato the eharacter 
and destiny of man, than any other disposi- 
tion of the mind. The English poets which 
sueceeded the Scots bards, added to their de- 
scriptions those very ideas and reflections, 
which those descriptions ought to have given 
birth to; but they have preserved from the 
fine imagination of the north, that gloom 
which is soothed with the roaring of the sea, 
and the hollow blast that rages on the barren 
heath, and, in short, every thing dark and 
dismal, which can force a mind dissatisfied 
with its existence hefe, to look forward to 
another state. “The vivid imagination of the 
people of the north, darting beyond the boun- 
daries of a world whose confines they inha- 
bited, penetrated through the black cloud 
that obscured their horizon, and seemed to 
represent the dark passage to eternity. 
«* We cannot decide, in a general manner, 
between the two different stvles of poetry, of 
which we may fairly say Homer and Ossian 
were the first models.” 
» That any person, who can read, should 
have been so ignorant and so foolish as 
to set up such an hypothesis as this, is 
perfectly wonderful: “ The English 
poets who succeeded the Scotch bards!” 
Will Madame Stael have the goodness 
in her next edition to inform us who are 
they? “ The same religious ideas in the 
Runic poems and in Ossian!” Will 
Madame Stael have the goodness to 
point out the resemblance? “ Ossian is 
reproached with his monotony : this fault 
exists much less in the different English 
and German poems which have imitated 
his style.’ Here again we must con- 
fess: our ignorance of English literature, 
and request the baroness to tell who these 
English poets are. The trifling ques- 
tions, whether the Ossian of Macpherson 
, ever existed, and whether, if he did exist, 
he were not an Irishman, and not a 
Scotchman, a fact as destructive as his 
non-existence to the authenticity of these 
poems, are overlooked by Madame Stael ; 
and if their authenticity be admitted, she 
has forgotten that they appeared not in 
a language intelligible to any civilized 
nation, till about the time of her own 
birth; and that Chaucer, and Spenser, 
and Shakespere, and Milton, whom we 
Englishmen consider as the great foun- 
ders and masters of English poetry, lived 
some time before Madame Stael was 
born, and will continue to live some time 
after Madame Stael is forgotten. — 
Among her remarks on Shakespere, 
the baroness tells us, that “ when a man 
is represented of a weak mind, and an 
inglorious destiny, such as Henry VI. 
PHILOLOGY AND CRITICISM. 
Richard II. and King Lear, condemned 
to perish ; the great debates of naturey 
between existence and non-existence, ab- 
sorb the whole attention of the specta- 
tors.”? We neither understand the méan- 
ing of this passage, nor the similarity of 
character and situation in the three kings. 
The three parts of Henry VI. she says, 
have an unlimited success in England, 
whereas not one of them has ever been 
acted within the memory of man. “ Ot- 
way, Rowe, aud some other English 
poets, Addison excepted, all wrote their 
tragedies in the style of Shakespere.’” 
More information this for illiterate Eng- 
lishmen! : 
«« The English language, although not so 
harmonious or pleasing to the ear as the lan- 
guage of the east, has, nevertheless, by the 
energy of its sound, a very great advantage in 
i every word that is strongly accented, 
has an efiect upon the mind, because it seems 
to come from alively impression. ‘The French 
language excludes from poetry a number of 
words as being too simple, which are really 
noble in English, from the manner in whieh - 
they are articulated: I shall offer one exam- 
ple: When Macbeth, at the moment he is, 
going to seat himself at the festive table, sees 
the place that was destined for him filled by 
the shade of Banquo, whom he has just as~ 
sassinated, he calls out with terror, § The ta- 
ble is full! and all the spectators tremble. 
If these same wards were to be repeated in 
French, “ La tatle est remplie,” the greatest 
actor in the world could not make the audi- 
ence forget their common acceptation. The 
French pronunciation does not admit of that 
accent, which ennobles every word by giving 
it animation.” : 
’ This attention to words, instead of the 
meaning and passion which they convey, 
is one of the characteristics of French 
taste. We once heard a Frenchman, a 
man of talents and letters, deséant upon 
the inimitable and untranslatable bean- 
ties of Racine; and the example he ad- 
duced was “ Roi de rgis ”? These words, 
he said, excited a sublime elevation of 
mind, by affecting the ears of the audi- 
tors, and the mouth and larynx ‘of the 
speaker, which could not have been pro- 
duced by the same expression in any other 
language, ancient or modern: 
«© The English are great writers m verse, 
and carry eloquence of mind to the highest 
degree ; but their works in prose searecly ar- 
take of ihat life and energy which is found in 
their poetry. The English reserve for their 
poetry all which belongs to’ the imagination 
—they consider prose but as the language of 
logic: the only object of their style is to make 
their arguments understood, and not to cre- 
ate:’n interest by theit expressions.” Phe, 
