site to enable an author to advance boldly to the defence of these persecuted opinions, to avow his belief in, and attachment to them, and to stake his reputation as a philosopher and a man of sense, on their merits; and such qualities Sir George Mackenzie undoubtedly displays, by the very circumstance of his publishing the work before us with his name prefixed, and a frank avowal of his readiness to abide the result of the most rigid inquiry. If the decision of intelligent men shall ultimately be adverse, the risk in reputation by such a step is incalculable; but if it shall be favourable, his merit will be proportionally. great. He will then be acknowledged to have investigated while others scoffed, and to have advanced to the support of truth, when others shrunk, in fear, from the opposition it encountered. The work itself, also, is distinct and perspicuous, and the subjects selected are interesting. The quantity of new matter is not great, but the impulse to inquiry which the work communicates is considerable. On the execution of the plates we must make one remark: Viewed as productions in the fine arts, they are deserving of little praise. There is a coarseness and unfinished appearance about some of them, which is neither creditable nor agreeable. We do not ascribe the fault to the eminent artist by whom they are executed; but suspect he has been stinted in his limits. The publisher appears to have considered the chief object of the plates to be, what it undoubtedly is, merely to represent development; and to have thought that this end would be as well accomplished by coarse lines as by fine ones. It is advisable, however, when attraction is in view, to present as many points of pleasing contemplation as possible; and we trust that, in the quality of engraving, the next phrenological publication will be more closely allied with the fine arts than the pre sent. ART. VI.-Julia Alpinula, with the Captive of Stamboul, and other Poems. By J. H. WIFFEN, Author of "Aonian Hours," &c. London: John Warren, Old Bond Street, 1820. Pp. 249. 12mo. Good taste, it is our opinion, should have forbidden all amplification of the exquisite epitaph upon which the first poem in this volume is founded. When Lord Byron removed the moss, for the second time, from its simple tablet, his fine tact bestowed upon it a very few lines of verse, and a short note in prose; feeling, assuredly, that no more was necessary to enwreathe with a garland of the poet's best-loved images, the name of Julia Alpinula. The music of that name-the touching sentiment on her monument, as if her gentle spirit breathed it from her tombinstantly call up a series of the most fascinating associations, pictures, and feelings that can regale the understanding, the imagination, or the heart. All that is innocent, and affectionate, and dutiful, and devoted, is embodied in the image of a female of the rarest beauty, halo'd with the sanctity of the purest-perhaps the only pure priesthood of the heathen world-bending her throbbing head at a tyrant's feet to supplicate a father's life, and repulsed to die on a father's grave-not a reproach uttered by her lips, to live engraved on her tomb-" Exorare patris necem non potui," telling her simple and pathetic tale--and "vixi annos xxIII." not only marking the fact, but indicating the cause of her early death, in the spirit of the most perfect meekness. In all this there is a charm altogether irresistible. It is delightful to connect the ancient world with our own in such a picture, and claim kindred with it, in the best and fairest features of our common nature. It is because we are intensely interested by proofs of this extension of our sympathies, that it has been so often said that something equivalent to the modern novel,lively picture of ancient private life,would attract us more than all the public histories of Greece and Rome. Here is a tale of private life, with the additional charm of truth, exceeding in simplicity and beauty the most exquisite episodes of Virgil himself; and, more impressively than Virgil's verse, recording, that the tenderest feelings occasionally found their home in the human heart, in times, as it may be said, of heroic virtues alone, or heroic crimes, when the kindly affections, the peculiar growth of a brighter dispensation, were almost necessarily sacrificed at the shrine of a cruel superstition. No heroine of modern fiction is to us so attractive as the beautiful, the gentle, the affectionate, the devoted, and withal the real Julia Alpinula. -a From these more refined thoughts" of the soul's soft green," the mind's eye glances to others of sterner cast. Julia sank beneath the iron stroke of Roman despotism,-amid the gorgeousness of Roman magnificence, the vastness of Roman power, and the terror of Roman revolutions. But Julia had lived, too, amid the glories of Helvetian nature; loved the sublime mountain with its eternal snows, and the lovely valley with its purple vines: and beheld with delight, the same tints, and blooms, and mighty shadows, and boundless foliage, that charm the modern visitor of the enchanting region of Switzerland. Nor is the thought without its magic, that the sublimer features of the landscape are identical. Unchanged as when Julia gazed upon its height, Mont Blanc looks down upon an ever-changing world, and pts the spectator to address to it,-with the variation of one word,-Byron's splendid apostrophe to the ocean, "Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure brow, But as thou toweredst then, thou towerest now." If it was "in fatis" that Julia's tragedy was to be amplified, we think we know poets whom the task would have suited better on the whole-always presuming that Byron declined it. We need only name Mrs. Hemans, who has wrought up so many of the striking incidents in history into the most powerful poetry. Although her taste and judgment would have produced a poem, with a vastly smaller sum of faults and a larger of beauties, we at the same time readily allow that the poem before us has passages of a very high order of merit. We were perhaps the more struck with these, that we arrived at them after making our way, somewhat irksomely, through a great deal of composition-for poetry or even verse we cannot call it-positively bad. In many a structure like unto stanzas, we found ourselves in confusion and obscurity inextricable; contending with strained thoughts, small conceits, prettinesses, and babyisms, and an endless and repulsive variety of affectations in language. We were likewise sorely tried in our rhythmical sensibilities by a greater quantity of hobbling measure, as well as bad rhyme, than we have met with in the same compass in any recent metrical composition. We think, however, that much of all this is yet curable, and had we space and time, we think we could assist the author, by a sort of index of his faults; and clear the way to his beauties, by separating the husks and shells of his defects. The tale is the simplest upon which a poem could be founded. Julia was the daughter of Julius Alpinus, or Alpinulus, chief or governor of Aventicum, the capital of Helvetia, then an important Roman province. She was early dedicated to Diana, the tutelary goddess of Aventicum, and had the rank of priestess of her temple. In her twenty-third year, as her epitaph bears witness, the catastrophe happened which was alike fatal to her father and herself. Julius Alpinulus was the friend of the Emperor Galba, and took arms against the usurper Otho, who was advancing to Italy with the legions of Germany, which had proclaimed him Emperor. The profligate and vindictive Aulus Cecina, who, from personal hatred to Galba,—by whom he had been prosecuted for embezzling the public money,-had been chiefly instrumental in instigating that grand revolt, preceded Otho with a large force; and, traversing Helvetia, defeated Alpinulus, secured his person, and, in spite of the prayers of the interesting daughter of his victim, put him to death. As the friend and partizan of Galba, Julius had the less chance with a conqueror who is recorded to have taken prompt and unsparing vengeance on his enemies. The inference from the epitaph is, that Julia died heart-broken, in consequence of this judicial murder of her beloved father. The inscription was discovered two centuries ago, and is one of the most exquisite Latin epitaphs ever inscribed on tablet. As Lord Byron's reading was obviously inaccurate,— and indeed, it had occurred to many to alter an important word or rather letter in its penult line *,-we make no apology for giving the inscription a place, on the authority of Gruter, the learned collector of the "Inscriptiones antiq; totius orbis Romani," who has furnished a fac-simile of the tablet, as well as the inscription. It runs thus: AVENTICI. JULIA. ALPINULA. HIC. JACEO. EXORARE. PATRIS. NECEM. NON POTVI. VIXI. ANNOS. XXIII. Mr. Wiffen commences his poem with some general reflections on the ceaseless course of time-a topic neither very new, nor handled by him in a very original way; to say nothing of his making Time not only course on, which he is known to do, but send wind and showers. "With rapid wing, in ceaseless flight, Time sweeps along, and leaves in night, Each brilliant aim of life's short span, The joys and agonies of man. And quenches, ne'er to burn again, And when in ruin they have rent pain, 'A startling Vision, void and vain." In the next section there is much of what we plainly call nonsense. Time, says the poet, sends likewise the spring, the dew, the summer, and the autumn. Now, the dew Time does not send; and the seasons are only measured portions of Time, limbs or quarters of that allegorical personage, which it is a solecism to say he either bestows or withholds. This From ille to illi. is evidently felt by the poet; for although he represents spring, summer, and autumn as the mere envoys of Time, he adduces Winter as Time's ally, or rather substitute, to be in its turn superseded by Pestilence and Fever; and such are the modes and results of this motley agency, that the reader concludes the passage about as wise as he began it. We shall give it all, and mark the especially enigmatical parts by Italics; hoping that some of our readers may be more fortunate than we have been in attaching to them a meaning. "As fast and forward flies his car, song, To lead the dance of life along, And pestilence and fever's flame The glorious Soul its power shall mock: Whirled into whiteness round the That pearl of pearls shall issue bright Of one so chastened, one whose love My lute in pity would essay The four last lines are quite melancholy. Some not very striking allusions to ancient Rome and Romans follow; and we cannot help thinking that the author weakens Roman names, by loving to give the whole, like the good Vicar. Junius Brutus, for example, reads very feebly in a high sounding verse. The poet describes with some spirit, the Helvetian Province of Rome, and does justice to the brave Alpinulus, and his love for the pride of his life, the innocent Julia. Yet he seldom fails to spoil his description by some extravagance. Thus, he calls Julia her father's 66 flower of innocence and love, That drew the sunshine down from Jove." Again, if Julia had not been, in baby language, called a "fairyshape, a spotless thing," nor predicated to have been “familiar with the face sublime of universal Pan," her description has considerable merit. |