PRINTED FOR J. MAWMAN, 22, POULTRY:

AND SOLD BY J. Deighton, CAMBRIDGE; HANWELL and Parker,
AND J. COOKE, OXFORD.

1807.

1. Flint, Printer, Old Bailey.

ART. 1.-Poems and Plays, by William Richardson, A. M, Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow, Longman. 1805..

ALL the compositions contained in these volumes, except a few very short poems, have already at different times appeared before the public, and undergone the fiery ordeal of criticism. Professor Richardson has now collected all those children of his fancy whom he considers worthy of parental protection, and on whose merits he grounds his claims to the immortality of the poet. He has courted the muse under as many disguises as ever Jupiter assumed in the prosecution of his less chaste amours, but whether or not with the same ultimate success as the heathen god, is now to be decided. At one time he puts on the demure methodistic air of an elegiac bard, and weeps, sighs, and whines in a manner sufficiently deplorable to melt the most obdurate heart. At another, he brightens up into a spruce and fashi onable beau, powdered, perfumed, and apparelled in a stile altogether irresistible. Ere long, he starts up in the form and dress of a shepherd, with a becoming crook over his shoulders, and puffing away with zeal and delight on the Scotch bag-pipe. While the prolonged sound of the drone is yet humming in our ears, who should rise before us, but the professor wrapped in the sweeping stole, and treading the lofty buskin in tragedy with a bloody dagger in the one hand, and a poisoned bowl in the other! The volumes are indeed a perfect raree shew. One page is drawn up, and Io! shepherds and their lasses sporting in the vale! Down it falls, and behold an Indian chief with hatchets, scalps, and tomahawks! The eye is soon relieved with the less formidable muster of a volunteer corps advancing against CRIT. REV. Vol. 10. January, 1807. B

dreadful discharge of blank cartridges, and again is startled at the spectre forms of Fingal, Starno, and other sta ring heroes. There is, doubtless, something very attractive in this variety of spectacle, and, at the time, we willingly overlook any defects, however glaring, in the execution of the several groups, satisfied with the general effect of the whole contrivance. When reason however begins to assume her sway over the impressions of sense, a revolucion of sentiment often takes place in the mind, and we are apt to feel surprise, not unmixed with shame, at the easy liberality with which we bestowed our commendation.

It may not beamiss to follow this poetical Proteus through several of the most remarkable of his transformations. We shall probably find that, under all his disguises, his general appearance retains enough of its original air to discover the 'concealed professor, and that beneath the sable suit of elegy, the gay attire of Cupid, the commodious kilt of the mountain shepherd, or the gorgeous pall of tragedy, there is a stiffness, or to speak more correctly a pedantry, acquired perhaps from his academical avocations, that does not exactly correspond with any of these characters, and rather tends to exhibit professor Richardson in an awkward point of view. An actor who attempts to perform a great many different characters seldom succeeds remarkably well in any; he is apt to perform them all in one way; to decorate Othello with the polite nonchalance of Ranger, and to carry the air of Scrub into the closet scene of Hamlet.

Let us consider the professor in the first place as a dealer in elegies. There are so many real evils in the world, that if a person is disposed to be exceedingly melancholy, he need not go far out of the ordinary walks of human life to discover topics of lamentation. By seizing on some of the more prominent misfortunes to which poor mortals are subject, and trusting to the emotions of our own reflecting hearts for their embellishment, any man of taste and feeling might easily manufacture a middle-sized poem of such gloomy materials as to awaken doleful associations even in the bosoms of those inclined to be jocular. Of this truth people in general are so well convinced, that they do not feel themselves greatly obliged to a writer who ransacks every corner of his imagination, for hidden images of pain, grief, and despondency." Accordingly, fictitious sorrows are not so delightful to the sensible people of this country as they formerly were, and strains that wail with fancied woe are in general permitted to contribute exclusively to the private enjoyment of the bard by whom they were indited. There is a native manliness in the soul of Britons, that

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disdains the whining ejaculations of written grief, and we trust that it will never suffer itself to be subdued by that childish cant of morbid sensibility that many modern poetasters have raised over the island. Professor Richardson may justly be included in the number of these plaintive mourners, We suppose his situation as professor of humanity in the university of Glasgow must be very comfortable. Why then should he terrify himself by such shocking visions as the following?

" Fancy listens to my lay;

Shrouds in her dusky pall th' expiring day!
Anon, athwart the burden'd skies

Slowly the deep, congenial glooms arise:
The lonely moan of the forlorn,

On the slow, pausing breath of midnight borne,
Flows from the visionary vale!

Seen by the livid gleam of fear,
Dimly featur'd shapes appear,

And melancholy's slow-puls'd heart assail :

Glaring fiends and spectres gaunt,

That from the gulf of horror rise, avaunt!'

Vol. I. p. 80.

With such acquaintance as here described constantly dangling at one's heels, existence must be very uncomfortable. But our author is quite another melancholy Jacques; he thinks nothing of moralizing on a stream half a summer's day, and loses and neglects the creeping hours of time' in very stale and unprofitable musings. Alluding to an oak that was shattered by a whirlwind, he proceeds thus:

'Sweet emblem! will the minstrel say
Who sighs and pours the plaintive lay;
And bending o'er the sculptur'd urn
Invokes the tuneful nine to mourn
Sweet emblem! will the minstrel say
And sigh and pour the plaintive lay;
And grieve that merit cannot save

From dire disease and an untimely grave.?

Vol. I. p. 82.

So completely has professor Richardson weakened his mind by such sickly effusions poured forth under a doze of imaginary evil, that when a subject of real interest occurs, he has nothing to bestow on it, but the lowest dregs of exhausted sentiment. He begins an elegy on the death of a young lady of his acquaintance as follows:

Ah! shepherds, what a lamentable change!
Behold that cheek where youth and beauty bloom'd
Lifeless and pale!'