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TO MY SON, AGED 15, AT CAMBRIDGE.
Now twice the spring, with flowrets gay,
Hath 'broider'd o'er her mantle green,
And twice the merry month of May

With hawthorn deck'd the vernal scene,
Since I in tuneful numbers hail'd the morn

When thou, my heart's dear boy, in happy hour wast born.

Nor had I miss'd the annual song,

When June return'd with roses crown'd ;
But rising sorrow check'd my tongue,

And cloudy care hung low'ring round,

While in the gloomy shades of threat'ning death.

I watch'd thy flutt'ring pulse, and fear'd thy parting breath,
How exquisite the anxious woe,

The agonizing bitter grief,
Maternal love alone can know,

'Midst glim'ring hopes of slow relief;

The cruel kindness of the healing art,

And those dim joyless smiles which rend the bursting heart!

Dear be those cares, to mem'ry dear,

Which sav'd thee from an early grave;

And ever bless'd the genial year,

The milder sky, the briny wave,

The healthful gale, which fading life restores,

Where the smooth swelling tide laves Hampton's happy shores.

Nor sav'd in vain; O, still pursue

The path where truth unerring leads,

Where reason early may subdue

The wild desires which fancy feeds;

Circean charms, that with a magic

force

Impel the feeble mind through youth's insensate course

Go on, dear boy, exert each pow'r

On time's rich treasures to improve ;

And may the slowly ripening hour,
Pass'd in the academic grove,

Strength to thy mind with ancient lore impart,

And judgment firm to guide a warm and feeling heart."

1 TO MY DAUGHTER, ON BEING SEPARATED FROM HER ON HER

MARRIAGE.

Dear to my heart as life's warm stream,
Which animates'this mortal clay,

For thee I court the waking dream,
And deck with smiles the future day;

And thus beguile the present pain
With hopes that we shall meet again.

Yet will it be, as when the past

Twin'd ev'ry joy, and care, and thought,

And

And o'er our minds one mantle cast
Of kind affections finely wrought?
Ah no! the groundless hope were vain,
For so we ne'er can meet again!

May he who claims thy tender heart
Deserve its love, as I have done!
For, kind and gentle as thou art,

If so belov'd, thou'rt fairly won.
Bright may the sacred torch remain,
And cheer thee till we meet again."

ELEGY.

Sigh not, ye winds, as passing o'er
The chambers of the dead you fly;
Weep not, ye dews, for these no more
Shall ever weep, shall ever sigh.
Why mourn the throbbing heart at rest?
How still it lies within the breast!
Why mourn, since death presents us peace,
And in the grave our sorrows cease?
The shatter'd bark, from adverse winds,
Rest in this peaceful haven finds;
And, when the storms of life are past,
Hope drops her anchor here at last.

Sigh not, ye winds, as passing o'er
The chambers of the dead you fly ;
Weep not, ye dews, for these no more
Shall ever weep, shall ever sigh.'

If to the above we add two or three of the songs, and Carisbrook Castle, (which last is not without its defects,) we shall have noticed most of the pieces in this collection which deserve to be quoted on account of their poetical merit. Mrs. Hunter may possess an elegant and well-stored mind, an improved taste, and the most amiable dispositions: but something more is requisite to constitute a genuine poet. In boldness and originality of sentiment, and in sublimity of diction, this fair author is evidently deficient; and the more we are delighted with the polished sweetness of a few of her compositions, the more we regret the tameness and apparent timidity which charaeterize the whole. In a club of French literary ladies, the most exceptionable of Mrs. H.'s poems would be received as agreeable vers de société ; but in a formal publication we look for higher merit.

The Song at Maria's Grave is simple and pathetic, but we are little enamoured of such prosaic lines as these;

From every port, with anxious care,

Fs kind attentive tondness wrote;

His love would still some gift prepare,

As witness to his constant thought.'

To form the rhyme in this last word, a Scotch pronunciation of it is requisite.

The 5th stanza of La Douce Chimere, with the exception of the collocation of the last line but one, is composed in the author's happiest manner:

Thy art can on the moon's beam send

The heart's warm wish from friend to friend,
Through air and ocean's waste,

And on some bright and changing star,
Though absent long, and distant far,

Remembrance may be placed.'

The absence and distance may refer either to the friend or to the star if to the former, the terms are too remote from their antecedent; and if to the latter, the luminary cannot, with propriety, be intitled unchanging.

The graceful ease of the second stanza of the verses on Time is injured by the omission of the relative in the third line ;-a vulgarism which occurs more than once in the course of the volume:

The sculptured urn, the marble bust,
By time are crumbled with the dust;
But tender thoughts the muse has twin'd
For love, for friendship's brow design'd,
Shall still endure, shall still delight,
Till time is lost in endless night.'

Mrs. H.'s rhymes are, in general, more correct than her composition: but we have to notice the want of correspondence between fate and yet, and between way and quay, which satisfy the eye, but not the ear.-Died and deed terminate two successive lines.We are not by any means partial to such cadences as,

The village bells ring merrily.

The milk maids sing so cheerily,' &c.

The wither'd leaves fell mournfully,

The autumn blast blew cold for me,' &c.

Among our minor bards, few are more exempt from affectation than this lady; yet she has needlessly given a French title to one of her poems, nicknames Winter old Hyem, calls Fortune bona Fortuna, and suspends at the shrine of the fickle goddess a lamp which smells of the machinery of the metaphysical poets:

It shall be formed of silent tears,
Slow dropping in the cave of care,

E e 4

Through

Through the cold gloom of ling'ring years
Congeal'd to crystal by despair.

It shall be wrought with tales of woe,
Where Fortune turn'd the adverse tide,
And taught the stream of chance to flow

In channels Hope herself denied,' &c.

Horace generously allows a poet to take a nap in the prosecution of a long work: but even his gallantry would not permit a lady to slumber in the composition of a sonnet.or an ode. In plain English, we beg leave to suggest the revision of these pleonastic expressions; comfortless despair*, peaceful calm, in wild discordance jar, dull ling'ring time creeps sad and slowly on, &c. To sons of toilsome care, it is superfluous to ascribe trouble; and if the moon's beam be pale, it is trifling to add that its ustre is wan.

Go on, dear boy! 'tis virtue leads;
He that determines, half succeeds,
Nor obstacles can move :'

Besides the impropriety of the negative conjunction after an affirmation, the syntax would imply that he who determines cannot move obstacles, which may be true or not, according to circumstances but the meaning is, that obstacles cannot daunt him who is resolute. The last line of the same stanza, And well thy race approve, is peculiarly flat. To approve a race well would scarcely pass current in prose.

Where is sometimes used for whither, and sometimes with a degree of vagueness which is not supported by the usage of accurate writing. To view with jaundiced eye is a colloquial phrase which is physically incorrect, but jaundice eye is, moreover, ungrammatical.

That sad Lelia should sit alone on the cold, cold ground, dis"tresses us much: 'but that sculptured frenzy should glare, and moping melancholy scowl upon a world of cares, distresses us

more.

Lest, however, we should be accused of scowling on this pretty volume, we are unwilling to dismiss it without observing, that most of the subjects, to which its contents relate, may well be supposed to have exhausted the splendid efforts of genius and invention. To celebrate with novel effect and in moving numbers the gloom of winter, the sweets of affection, or the pangs of disappointment, has become difficult because it has been often attempted; and to manage hackneyed topics with more than ordinary dexterity is to merit praise. Had Mrs. H.

We protest against the authority of Gray, or any other, for the use of this phrase.

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been more fastidious in her selection, or had she laboured her effusions with more toilsome care, she would doubtless have rendered her performance less open to criticism: yet, in its present form, the work contains passages which will much. more than repay the trouble of perusal.

TH

ART. XV. A political Essay on the Commerce of Portugal and her Colonies, particularly of Brasil in South America. By J. J. da Cunha de Azeredo Coutinho, Bishop of Fernambuco, and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisboh. Translated from the Portuguese. 8vo. pp. 198. 5 s. Boards. Robinsons. 1801. HIS work would of itself strongly attract attention, even though it were divested of that interest which it derives from the relations subsisting between Great Britain and Portugal. In the course of our perusal of it, we were forcibly struck with the reasonableness of the opinion which considers the Portuguese colonies as a sort of pledge for the forbearance of France towards the mother country; since that power is well aware that, whenever she seizes that kingdom, its foreign dependencies must fall into the hands of England, and place her in such a situation with respect to Guiana and Spanish America, as the republic must deprecate. It will perhaps create some surprize in the reader, to find a Portuguese Bishop, a resident of the Brasils, display the intelligence and philosophy manifested in this volume.

The translator's account of this essay is so just, that we shall adopt it:

It is almost unnecessary to observe that, hitherto, we have but very few good statistical sources respecting Portugal, and scarcely any respecting her distant dominions, it having always been the policy of the Portuguese government to prevent the publicity of information, concerning their colonies, especially the rich country of Brasil, which may eventually stand so much in need of the protection of the British empire.

The work before us contains more useful information, respecting the natives, the climate, the soil, the productions, the commerce, the navigation, and the capabilities, of the Portuguese colonies, but especially Brasil, than has ever yet been communicated to the public. The subject is treated, beside, in a plain and familiar style, by a man at once distinguished by rank, talents, literature, and local knowledge. The correctness of his statements is the more implicitly to be relied upon, as, with peculiar advantages of situation, he collected them on the spot. He speaks everywhere as an eye-witness and still, indeed, remains an inhabitant of those beautiful regions, whose luxuriance he has so happily described.

The advantages, which may result to Portugal, if it should remain an independent nation, from the knowledge conveyed in this

work,

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