understand, is to be withdrawn, and the beautiful scenery (which is infamously correct in its perspective), and the decorations, are to be made over to the old modern opera of the Travellers, in which Braham will sing in all the quarters of the globe. A new tragedy is about to be produced, in which Mr. Kean and Mr. Young will sustain the leading characters. New tragedies are now-adays mere mushroom things, that grow and perish in a single night. We shall, however, be indeed glad if Mr. Elliston should fortunately have obtained a pure English tragedy. If it be good, we will do our best to welcome it. ESSAYS ON PETRARCH, BY UGO FOSCOLO.⭑ THERE is much in this volume to gratify the lovers of Italian poetry. That the number of these has, of late years, much increased among us, may be regarded as no unfavourable symptom. It is a sign that we are so far willing to revert to the golden ages of our literature. The first among the moderns, who led us back to this source at which our elder poets had drunk in so much of their inspiration, was Gray. When in his company, a young man at Cambridge happened to make an apposite quotation from Dante; Gray suddenly turned round to him, and said, “Right; but have you read Dante, Sir? On the young man's modestly answering that "he had endeavour ed to understand him," Gray addressed the chief of his discourse to him for the remainder of that evening, next invited him to his rooms, and soon became the director of his studies, as he continued ever after to be his friend. For one in whom this predilection was equally strong, we must go as far back as Milton, who, in one of his early prose works, speaking of those poets who had written on love, declares that " he preferred above them all the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never wrote but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts, without transgression." In the preceding age, Sir Philip Sidney's blessing on such as honour poetry, is that " so doing their souls shall be placed with Dante's Beatrice." It ought not to be reckoned among the tyrannical acts of Henry VIII. that he enjoined a nobleman at his court, Lord Morley, the task of translating the Triumphs of Petrarch," a wor thy clerke," as Chaucer had called -whose rhetorik sweet A man of genius feels more intensely, and suffers more strongly than another; and, for this very reason, when the force of his passion has subsided, he retains for a longer period the recollection of what it himself again under its influence; and, in has been, and can more easily imagine my conception, what we call the power of imagination, is chiefly the combination of strong feelings and recollections. Thus a man of genius is peculiarly gifted with the faculty of observing the secret workings of nature, as she prevails in his own heart, and in the hearts of all mankind; and is enabled to describe those feelings, and bring them home to every reader. The great secret of the poet's art is to make us feel our existence by the force of sympathy; but at the ferings, it is impossible for him to examine moment that he groans under his own sufthe workings of his heart, or those of others; and the lyrical poetry of Petrarch, which may be read in the course of a few London. John Murray, 1823. days, was written during a period of thirtytwo years. Many of the pieces, no doubt, were conceived at moments when he was under the immediate influence of his pas sion; but were written many days, per haps many months, and certainly perfect ed many years afterwards.-P. 60. Images in poetry work upon the mind according to the process of nature herself; first they gain upon our senses; then touch the heart; afterwards strike our imagination; and ultimately imprint themselves upon our memory, and call forth the exertion of our reason, which consists mainly in the examination and comparison of our sensations. This process, indeed, goes on so rapidly as to be hardly perceived; yet all the gradations of it are visible to those who have the power of reflecting upon the operations of their own minds. Thoughts are in themselves only the raw material; they assume one form or another; they receive more or less brilliancy and warmth, more or less novelty and richness, according to the genius of the writer. It is by compressing them in an assemblage of melodious sounds, of warm feelings, of luminous metaphors, and of deep reasoning, that poets transform, into living and eloquent images, many ideas that lie dark and dumb in the mind; and it is by the magic presence of poetical images, that we are suddenly, and at once, taught to feel, to imagine, to reason, and to meditate, with all the gratification, and with none of the pain, which commonly attends every men. tal exertion.-P. 172. The volume is inscribed to Lady Dacre, who has adorned it with many elegant translations from the poems of Petrarch. We shall select that of the sonnet, beginning Vago Auge letto. Poor solitary bird, that pour'st thy lay, Or haply mournest the sweet season gone, As chilly night and winter hurry on, And day-light fades, and summer flies way, Where all deplore the first infring'd command, Will guide her safe, from primal bondage free, Reckless of stop or stay, To that true east, where she desires to be. If we understand the author's dedication rightly, others of his friends have also contributed their assistance. In no other way can we account for it, that the same verse is in two different places translated differently, and in both, as we think, erroneously. Bench' è la somma di mia morte rea. In this we can see little meaning; It If we are ever to have a translation of all Petrarch's Italian poems (and we should like much to see one) it may perhaps be most reasonably expected from one of the other sex. There was something lady-like in the character of Petrarch himself. Extreme liveliness of feeling and delicacy of taste were among its most distinguishing features. There is no comparison in the nicety required in transferring his poems or those of Dante into another language. The Ὕδατι γάρ μένον τ' ἐπ ̓ Ασωπίῳ The inspiration of Petrarch is less lofty and less varied, but it dwells in his own breast. In Petrarch we could imagine ourselves to recognize the minstrel, in Dante the bard. The one sports gracefully with a tuneful language, which he found already made; runs on it new divisions without end, and exhausts all the resources of its harmony. The other creates for himself a new language, which he uses rather as the exponent of his genius than of his technical skill. That Petrarch did not acknowledge the mighty powers of his predecessor as they deserved, may he attributed less to envy than to an inferiority of mind, which made him in some measure incapable of estimating them. He would himself have been comprehended by Dante, as the less is comprehended by the greater. THE MISCELLANY. MORAL EFFECTS OF REVOLUTIONS. In revolutionary times, as where a civil war prevails in a country, men are much worse, as moral beings, than in quiet and untroubled states of peace. So much is matter of history. The English under Charles II. after twenty years' agitation and civil tumults; the Romans after Sylla and Marius, and the still more bloody proscriptions of the triumvirates; the French, after the wars of the league and the storms of the revolution, were much changed for the worse, and exhibited strange relaxations of the moral principle. But why? What is the philosophy of the case? Some will think it sufficiently explained by the necessity of witnessing so much bloodshed-the hearths and the very graves of their fathers polluted by the slaughter of their countrymen-the " acharnement" which characterises civil contests (as always the quarrels of friends are the fiercest)-and the license of wrong which is bred by war and the majesties of armies. Doubtless this is part of the explanation. But is this all? Mr. Coleridge has referred to this subject in "The Friend;" but, to the best of my remembrance, only noticing it as a fact. Fichte, the celebrated German philosopher, has given us his view of it ("Idea of War," p. 15); and it is so ingenious, that it deserves mention: it is this: "Times of revolution force men's minds inwards: hence they are led amongst other things to meditate on morals with reference to their own conduct. But to subtilize too much upon this subject must always be ruinous to morality, with all understandings that are not very powerful, i. e. with the majority, because it terminates naturally in a body of maxims, a specious and covert self-interest. Whereas, when men meditate less, they are apt to act more from natural feeling, in which the natural goodness of the heart often interferes to neutralize or even to overbalance its errors." Z. SONNET TO AN ENTHUSIAST. YOUNG ardent soul, graced with fair Nature's truth, Gilded by shine of sun or shadow-stain'd, Thrice cursed of thy race, thou art ordain'd To share beyond the lot of common men. T. Tom Hood SIGNS OF THE TIMES. I was pleased to see, the other day, the Sir Walter Scott, a stage-coach, taking its place among the Wellingtons, Cornwallises, Lord Exmouths, and other mighty names. This is the first compliment of the kind that I remember to have seen paid to letters; and is a token, I am willing to believe, that we are really be coming" a reading public." When the Sir Walter Scott can be a name, ad captandum, for the ordinary run of coach travellers, outside passengers and all, we are at least advancing. A compliment of such low origin, may not be thought very flattering; but, as a test of fame, it is surely something; and it is valuable too in proportion to the real worth of the person on whom it is conferred. A chimney-sweeper may confer honour when he praises Sir Walter Scott. I confess I should like to see Chaucer, Spenser, Bacon, Burke-giving fame to our taverns and pot-houses; ay, and receiving fame too from the same sources. HEADS, they have about as much claim to notice, as most of the fiery persons who have been so long the sole subjects of the sign-painter; and as accessaries to a beef-steak, and a pint and pipe, we might derive associations from their names quite as seasonable and agreeable as our present eternal mixture of blood and gun-powder. We have the Shakspeare's Head-but only in the neigh bourhood of the theatres, where it can scarcely be regarded as a piece of genuine, disinterested homage. As Send it to Brentford, to any worthy victualler who may want such a thing, and he will think it necessary, I fear, to put a cocked hat upon it, and call it the King of Prussia. Their This preference that is shown to military and naval heroes, does not originate in their worth, (let it be what it may,) but their notoriety, which is decidedly a good groundwork for "Heads," that are meant as a welcome to all comers. names have been gazetted-transmitted through a thousand newspapers to every corner of the country; not to say that they are mixed up with events, in which every one, down to the lowest, has an interest in person, pride, or pocket; that the poorest beggar in the land may have shared their honours, and have a wooden leg at least, or an empty sleeve to show for it. These are the names, beyond a doubt, for universal use. We, who read Milton and Shak-. speare, know that, as benefactors to their kind, they are worthy of every mode of public worship; but John Lump never heard of either of them, and he is not a man to be despised by the retailers of gin and ale. The gallant Benbow all the world knows and if not, the gun at his elbow, and his flame-coloured face, tell his story in a moment. I hope to see this matter mended, and that our poets and philosophers may in time become popular enough for the signposts. Not that I would have the heroes removed altogether. No, noI love old Benbow, and would have |