• To Mrs.

amore

GUARINI

In canuti pensier si disconvene.

Yes, I think I once heard of an amorous youth
Who was caught in his grandmother's bed;
But I own I had ne'er such a liquorish tooth

As to wish to be there in his stead.

'Tis for you, my dear madam, such conquests to make, Antiquarians may value you high,

But, I swear, I can't love for antiquity's sake,
Such a poor virtuoso am I.

I have seen many ruins all gilded with care,
But the cracks were still plain to the eye;
And I neer felt a passion to venture in there,
But turn'd up my nose, and pass'd by !

I perhaps might have sigh'd in your magical chain,
When your lip had more freshness to deck it;
But I'd hate even Dian herself in the wane,
She might then go to hell for a Hecate!

No, no! when my heart's in these amorous faints,
Which is seldom, `thank heaven! the case;
For by reading the Fathers and Lives of the Saints,
I keep up a stock of good grace.

But then 'tis the creature, luxuriant and fresh,
That my passion with ecstacy owns ;

For indeed, my dear madam, though fond of the flesh,
I never was partial to bones!'

• SONG.

P. 32.

If swearing, however, will do it,.
Come, bring me the calendar, pray-
I vow, by that lip, I'll go through it,
And not miss a saint on my way.
The angels shall help me to wheedle,
I'll swear upon every one

That e'er danc'd on the point of a needle,
Or rode on a beam of the sun!

Oh! why should Platonic control, love,
Enchain an emotion so free?

Your soul, though a very sweet soul, love,
Will ne'er be sufficient for me.
If you think, by this coldness and scorning,
To seem more angelic and bright,
Be an angel, my love, in the morning,
But, oh! be a woman to-night!' P. 39.

On such poems there can be little to remark: every reader will perceive their merit. The following is more serious in its levity.

• To

With all my soul, then, let us part,
Since both are anxious to be free;
And I will send you home your heart,
If you will send back mine to me.
We've had some happy hours together,
But joy must often change its wing;
And spring would be but gloomy weather,
If we had nothing else but spring.

• "Tis not that I expect to find

A more devoted, fond, and true one,
With rosier cheek or sweeter mind-
Enough for me that she's a new one.
• Thus let us leave the bower of love,
Where we have loiter'd long in bliss;
And you may down that path-way rove,
While I shall take my way through this.

Our hearts have suffer'd little harm
In this short fever of desire;
You have not lost a single charm,
Nor I one spark of feeling fire.

My kisses have not stain'd the rose
Which nature hung upon your lip,
And still your sigh with nectar flows
For many a raptur'd soul to sip.

In his preface the author has criticised the Latin amatory poets with much taste.

Mr. Little gave much of his time to the study of the amatory writers. If ever he expected to find in the ancients that delicacy of sentiment and variety of fancy which are so necessary to refine and animate the poetry of love, he was much disappointed. I know not any one of them who can be regarded as a model in that style; Ovid made love like a rake, and Propertius like a schoolmaster. The mythological allusions of the latter are called erudition by his commentators; but such ostentatious display, upon a subject so simple as love, would be now esteemed vague and puerile, and was, even in his own times, pedantic. It is astonishing that so many critics have preferred him to the pathetic Tibullus; but I believe the defects which a common reader condemns have been looked upon rather as beauties by those erudite men, the commentators, who find a field for their ingenuity and research in his Grecian learning and quaint

abscurities.

• Tibullus abounds with touches of fine and natural feeling. The idea of his unexpected return to Delia, " Tune veniam subito," &c. 18 imagined with all the delicate ardor of a lover; and the sentiment of "nec te posse carere yelim," however colloquial the expression may have been, is natural, and from the heart. But, in my opinion, the poet of Verona possessed more genuine feeling than any of them. His life was, I believe, unfortunate; his associates were wild and abandoned; and the warmth of his nature took too much advantage of the latitude which the morals of those times so criminally allowed to the passions. All this depraved his imagination, and made it the slave of his senses; but still a native sensibility is often very warmly perceptible; and when he touches on pathos, he reaches the heart immediately. They who have felt the sweets of return to a home from which they have long been absent, will confess the beauty of those simple unaffected lines

"O quid solutis est beatius curis !
Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino

Labore fessi venimus Larem ad nostrum

Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto." CAR M. xxxii.

* His sorrows on the death of his brother are the very tears of poesy; and when he complains of the ingratitude of mankind, even the inexperienced cannot but sympathise with him. I wish I were a poet; I should endeavour to catch, by translation, the spirit of those beauties which I admire so warmly. It seems to have been peculiarly the fate of Catullus, that the better and more valuable part of his poetry has not reached us; for there is confessedly nothing in his extant works to authorise the epithet "doctus," so universally bestowed upon him by the ancients. If time had suffered the rest to escape, we perhaps should have found amongst them some more purely amatory; but, of those we possess, can there be a sweeter specimen of warm, yet chastened description, than his loves of Acme and Septimius? and the few little songs of dalliance to Lesbia are distinguished by such an exquisite playfulness, that they have always been assumed as models by the most elegant modern Latinists. Still, I must confess, in the midst of these beauties,

"medio de fonte leporum

Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat."

It has often been remarked that the ancients knew nothing of gallantry; and we are told there was too much sincerity in their love to allow them to trifle with the semblance of passion. But I cannot perceive that they were any thing more constant than the moderns; they felt all the same dissipation of the heart, though they knew not those seductive graces by which gallantry almost teaches it to be amiable. Wotton, the learned advocate for the moderns, deserts them in considering this point of comparison, and praises the ancients for their ignorance of such a refinement; but he seems to have collected his notions of gallantry from the insipid fadeurs of the French romances, which are very unlike the sentimental levity, the "grata protervitas," of a Rochester or a Sedley.' P. v.

The extracts that we have given abundantly prove the genius of the author. Why will he degrade himself by thus miserably misapplying it? The age in which we live has imposed upon him the necessity of employing decent language; but few ages have ever been disgraced by a volume more corrupt in its whole spirit and tendency. We have not been avaricious in its praise; but this book is mischievous in proportion to its merit. The Monk had its spots ;-this is leprous all over.

ART. XIV. THE TITLE-PAGE REVIEWED.

AFTER a formal repetition, under these words, of his former title-page, and, on its back, of his letter and postscript, the tract before us proceeds to display

To be had GRATIS of Messrs. Cadell and Davies, Strand."

NOTWITHSTANDING the intimation thrown out in this motto, of our having engaged in a perilous task, when we ventured on the grounds which this writer had taken, and were treading upon fire under treacherous embers, we return to the subject undismayed.

. DOCTOR Montucci-since Doctor he will have it-sets out with stating his embarrassment, whether to expostulate with or thank us for our early commentary on his Title-page, proposals, and letter. If thanks were supposed to be our due, we here fully disclaim them; for they all would have gone in silence to their own place, but for the note subjoined to the last; and of this we before apprised him. As to what he alleges on the subject, in the following paragraph, we have no objection. The futility,' says he, of the arguments of the Critical Review, grounded on abstracts from Dr. Montucci's Prefatory Letter to his Proposals, will be manifest to any one who has read the whole of that letter; and those who would give credit to arguments grounded upon quotations, without consulting the original, are not worth the notice of their opponent.'-We have no objection to abide by the doctor's appeal, and refer therefore to our Review for the month of July.

Dr. Montucci readily confesses, that he was rather severe upon the Critical Reviewers in his prefatory letter'-and why? in revenge for their declining to comply with his very modest request, only to delay their review of Dr. Hager's work, till he