some of the earliest acts of his reign, and that throughout that circle within which the private conduct of the late King was most emphatically experienced, to feel the happiness he communicated was his most selfish indulgence. If he was too generous to be a strict economist, and too economical to be profusely generous, which we firmly believe to have been the case, it will not be difficult to account for his losing the credit both of economy and generosity in the estimation of a certain description of politicians. But the memory of a prince who lived down all the satire and malevolence of Junius,-of Junius who, from his dark ambush, struck at every virtue and every feeling of his sovereign, may now be considered as out of danger. It is "fair" indeed "to speak of the regular life" of George the Third, of whom it would not be too much to say that he was the individual cause of a revolution in the manners of his people, unequalled by any of the rulers of mankind recorded in history, if we look to the foundation on which it was constituted. At the period when he came to the throne, high life was full of libertinism, and the atmosphere of the court was impure and pestilential. At the age of twenty-one, George the Third entered upon the firm and uniform observance of the duties of a Christian, the charities and bonds of the conjugal state, and the decorous and ingenuous manners of an English gentleman. Junius in his celebrated letter to this amiable prince claims for an English gentleman the privilege of being to a certain degree vicious, but the King thought otherwise, and the nation now feels the value of his virtuous selfdenials. His repasts were frugal, his amusements manly, his enjoyments peaceable, pure, and affectionate. He had neither favourites nor mistresses, nor buffoons, nor flatterers, but as a king and a father, from youth to age, he lived, not indeed in the display of those splendid qualities which produce ambiguous greatness, but in the practice of those dispositions which evince decided goodness. His early hours, his social rides, his rational evenings, were the sweeteners of his royal cares, which were unremitted, and severely and scrupulously performed. He was the faithful husband of an excellent queen, the happy father of a happy family, the model of his court, the soul of his administration, the ornament and support of the church and the empire. And so, indeed, he continued to be when weighed down with years and deprived of sight, till the light of reason left him, and it pleased God to throw a veil between him and the sorrows which usually gather around the last years of mortality. He was long separated from earthly communion, and placed in a little ideal world of his own, of soft and seraphic abstraction. He who now thus feebly endeavours to stamp upon his pages the image of this excellent person, retains and cherishes the remembrance of his last, or nearly

sor.

his last attendance at the private chapel of his palace at WindThere about sun-rise, the king was at his orisons; aged, feeble, blind, yet intent upon the service, and audibly making each response. Affliction, which could never subdue his moral courage, had served to confirm his religious constancy. The beginning of every day was given to his God, and God blessed the remainder. The blessing followed him into his privacy: his hearth was blessed, his home was happy; his family returned his endearments. As a man, he lived above his people, and was more than king by the moral supremacy of his example. To his royal house he has well illustrated the value of domestic purity. His example, and the filial tears of his subjects have proved to his descendants, that of all the jewels of a sovereign, the most precious is that which he wears in his bosom,-the talisman which turns obedience into protection, and encircles the throne with an invisible rampart. The king at last is gone! his pilgrimage is at length terminated, and though he has been personally lost to his people for nine melancholy years, the impression of his death has been scarcely less on the minds of his affectionate and grateful subjects than if, like his daughter and grand-daughter, he had been huried away with the dew upon his branch into a green and untimely grave. His example still lives, his memory still governs, and whatever vicissitudes this nation is doomed to experience, whatever the impure progeny of jacobin principles. may bring of disaster or turpitude upon Britain's sons, the lessons of this admirable reign of sixty years may still, under Providence, arrest the progress of destruction, indicate the means. of restoration, and reconduct the steps of a misguided people into the track of their ancient glory.

ART. II.-Common Sense: a Poem. 8vo. pp. 53. Brown. Edinburgh, 1819.

FROM the title of this poem, our readers may fear that we are about to inflict upon them a dissertation on a most necessary, though very unostentatious qualification, which has been justly eulogized by men of every name and party, though too often neglected in practice by those who most profess to admire it in theory. As however our author, though there is a reasonable infusion of this virtue in his poem, has not once alluded to it, and has only taken it by way of motto, we shall imitate his example, and spare our readers all the good things which we hope they will courteously believe we had it in our power to have said upon the subject. Common sense is a qualification

so peculiarly necessary in our profession as critics, and one with out which sprightliness and profundity may be both so much misplaced, that in all our adorations paid to the Graces and the Muses, we could wish to keep our eye directed towards the shrine of this humbler divinity. That her title has been often unfairly usurped will not be doubted by any who have witnessed the delirious ravings which a few years ago startled the world · under this much-abused designation, and which have been again re-echoed from our Temples of Reason.

Our poet opens his incantations with some severe remarks on the great increase of the members of his order, since the time when Button's room would contain the whole fraternity. He. does not, however, account for the fact, or inform us whether this increase of poetical population arises from an application of the poor laws to the hamlet of Parnassus. Possibly the demand for the manufacture may have increased the number of operators: till they are in danger of starving each other. Our author's comparison of "Egypt's frogs" is quite indecorous, and we fear if there are any radicals in the fraternity, they will make as: much use of it to his annoyance, as other radicals have done of Burke's "swinish multitude,' or Virgil's "nati consumere fruges."

From the species our author logically descends to the individuals; of whom Messrs. Phillips, Maturin, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Leigh Hunt, Crabbe, Campbell, Moore, with two or three lady-poets, are made to pass in review before him; much in the same way that the beasts passed before Adam, and for much the same purpose. The first ("Counsellor or Orator Phillips") is very uncourteously stated to be “not simply dull, but crazy; mad outright."

Trope murdering trope, his vague ideas flit,
Till claret makes the medley pass for wit;
He curses kings, and Viscount Castlereagh,
Tithes, vetos, and the "Immortal Memory;'
Till, soothed by three times three, he deigns to smile,
And tunes his harp to chaunt the Emerald Isle.
Oh! then how sweetly o'er the astonished throng
Floats the soft tide of eulogy and song-

Kings, Patriots, Poets, mingle in the dance,
With Curran's speeches and with Borhoime's lance;

A greater still succeeds his mighty brother,

And each seems goodlier, greater, than another." (P. 3,4.).

Of the Bertram of that reverend divine, Mr. Maturin, our poet has not spoken more strongly than we, who are no poets, and consequently not by nature writers of fiction, have done before him. We must refer to the craniologists to decipher

what"Bertram's frenzy" has to do with "the jolly full moon" and "spring-tides."

In the lines on Lord Byron our author exhibits his common sense in a more favourable light than his poetry. He very justly censures the "praises sweet," which have been so thickly heaped upon "the surly democrat," (this is not spoken poeticè,) by some of our own fraternity. It is quite out of all rule to mention princes or reviewers by their vulgar cognomen, and to say,

66

Jeffrey, with Christian charity so meek,

Kisses the hand that smote him on the cheek." (P.6.)

Mr. Coleridge's

"Christabelle" "that singularly wild and beauteous story," is very fair game to a satirist, but it is not within the bounds of literary decorum to say of an author,

"His is no affected rant,

He lives on opium, and he studies Kant;
Not over clear at first, what mortal brain

Opium and Kant together could sustain?" (P. 8.)

Neither can we quite approve of naming Mr. Coleridge's Lay Sermons" in the same page with his Christabelle; Mr. Coleridge's truly idiosyncratic diction wraps up his thoughts in enigmas, which it is not often in our power to solve, but we can discover enough to see that the meaning and moral of some of his pieces are better than those of others.

Of Wordsworth our author says little, except to commend

"The pure and spotless tenor of his lays,"

and to censure the badness of his rhymes, the obscurity of his sense, the puerility of his diction, and the poverty of his fancy. We think that a person not among the admirers of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, must be less or more than flesh and blood not to allow him a sprinkling of pathos and some knowledge of the human heart.

We quite coincide with the encomiums on the manly muse of Southey, but object to our author's sly mixture of politics with poetry.

"Southey again is cast in other mould,

He seems a relic of the days of old :

When courtly knights wore harness that would crack

The puny sinews of a modern back;

When grave divines, of true polemic breed,

Wrote more than their degenerate sons can read:

When Shakspeare was the Reynolds of the day,

And Cecil held the seat of Castlereagh." (P. 10, 11.)

We shall not be supposed to be advocating the cause of Mr. Leigh Hunt, when we object to the bad taste in which he is cen

sured by our author; we recollect no synonymes in our "Gradus ad Parnassum" to such expressions as "conceited prig" and "leathern ears." We had hoped that the regions of "Cockenaye" (so our poet styles the purlieus of "great Augusta,") would have been too classic to endure the trash of Leigh Hunt, whose chief attraction we suppose is being able to designate Lord Byron by the epithet "Dear;" but it seems we were mistaken; "For many a Cockney doats upon the song. There's Hazlitt, of the intellectual touch, Admires Leigh Hunt and Chaucer very much; Hazlitt, the Addison of Cockney Land, Whom all admire, though few can understand: Keates, Shelley, Field, the Minstrel King adore, And all the Table-Round exclaim encore: And many a prentice-bard, unknown to fame,

Prays that his powers may one day be the same." (P. 14, 15.)

Mr. Crabbe appears to be a great favourite with our author,

"I who never weep,

And o'er a Werter's woes am apt to sleep,

Even I, though somewhat rude, can feel for woe
Such as I've known, or such as I may know;

Even I can feel at tales of love or strife,

Stamped, as are his, with traits of real life." (P. 16.)

Very true: admit Mr. Crabbe to be the first poet of his day in the peculiar line which he has chosen for the exercise of his talents; but is this all that is required of a Clergyman, an aged Clergyman? Our author appears to surmise, that there may be some peccadilloes in Mr. Crabbe's productions; for he remarks, that

(6 some may deem

He shows small taste in chusing of a theme."

It is not so much upon Mr. Crabbe's want of taste in this respect that we are inclined to animadvert, as upon the absence of that delicate tact which we might suppose a member of the sacred profession would peculiarly possess in discovering what things become his character and function. Without entering into particulars we leave to Mr. Crabbe and his readers to determine whether many of his stories and illustrations do not offend against this rule.

Of Campbell our author applauds the "faultless finishing," but laments that he does not give sufficient play to his genius, so that although" always sweet," he is "sometimes tame."

Moore,

"Whose song, couleur de rose,

Strong, clear, and luscious, as Rosolio flows,"