We are glad to descend from the clouds to the poet's abode, even though he there introduces us to the company who are to hear his tale in such sad sportive simplicity as he imagines this to be.

To the stone table in my garden,

Loved haunt of many a summer hour,
The squire is come;-his daughter Bess
Beside him in the cool recess
Sits blooming like a flower.

With these are many more convened;
They know not I have been so far-

I see them there in number nine

Beneath the spreading Weymouth pine

I see them-there they are!

How like an old nurse bo-peeping with a baby?

There sits the vicar and his dame;

And there my good friend, Stephen Otter;

And e'er the light of evening fail,

To them I must relate the tale

Of Peter Bell the potter.

Miss Betsy is quite delighted with the bard's arrival from his aërial excursion, where it was likely enough that Peter Bell the potter would go to pot, and thus naturally exclaimed

'Oh, here he is!' cried little Bess

She saw me at the garden door,
"We 've waited anxiously and long,'
They cried, and all around me throng,
Full nine of them, or more!

However sickly and absurd this last line may be considered, it is no unfit prelude to the story itself, of which having given the outline, we shall now quote some passages. Among the hero's other rambles

he had been at Inverness;

And Peter, by the mountain rills,

Had danced his rounds with Highland lasses;
And he had lain beside his asses
On lofty Cheviot hills-

Two of these lines might be mended with this Potter Don-Juan. But we leave the suggestion to Mr. W. and journey on.

And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales,
Among the rocks and winding scars;
Where deep and low the hamlets lie
Beneath their little patch of sky

And little lot of stars:

With any thing less winding than scars (abrupt angular and precipitous ravines or faces of rock) we are unacquainted; the phrase is as much nature as the namby-pamby about little lots of stars is poetry. But of Peter? Peter, we have mentioned, is a worthless rascal

Of all that lead a lawless life,

Of all that love their lawless lives.

In city or in village small,

He was the wildest far of all;

He had a dozen wedded wives.

Nay, start not!-wedded wives-and twelve!
But how one wife could e'er come near him,
In simple truth I cannot tell;

For be it said of Peter Bell,

To see him was to fear him.

He had a dark, and sidelong walk,—

That is, like a crab; but how a walk can be dark, unless figuratively spoken of blindness, we do not comprehend. His particular nocturnal perambulation, and meeting with the ass, the subject of this poem, being fully and faithfully delineated, the tale advances, though slowly, through pleonasms.

All, all is silent, rocks and woods,
All still and silent-far and near;
Only the ass, with motion dull
Upon the pivot of his skull

Turns round his long left ear,

Thought Peter, What can mean all this?'

And we think what can all this mean? The pillory being put down by act of parliament, not only asses, but rogues, may now turn their long left ears on the pivots of their skulls, only, perhaps Mr. Curtis the aurist will object to the anatomy of the figure. If that celebrated practioner would think it a foolish, Peter Bell declares it to be à desperate trick.

'I'll cure you of these desperate tricks'—

And with deliberate action slow,

His staff high raising, in the pride
Of skill, upon the ass's hide

He dealt a sturdy blow.

He continues to belabour the ass, as the author continues to belabour his poetry; but nevertheless neither of them makes way. Indeed the parallel effect on ass and poem (if we may personify it) seems to run, as the saying is, on all fours.

Upon the beast the sapling rings,

Heav'd his lank sides, his limbs they stirred;

He gave a groan-and then another,

Of that which went before the brother,

And then he gave a third.

All by the moonlight river side
He gave three miserable groans;
''Tis come then to a pretty pass,"
Said Peter to the groaning ass,
'But I will bang your bones!"'

Having disposed of this birth of male twin groans, we have a sort of parody upon them in

'A loud and piteous bray,'

which the banging elicited. The effect of this bray is quite supernatural, though the author pretends to have dispensed with its agency.

This out-cry (of the ass) on the heart of Peter
Seems like a note of joy to strike,-

Joy on the heart of Peter knocks;—

But in the echo of the rocks

Was something Peter did not like.

If this be not maudlin trash, we cannot tell what is: but it is the same throughout.

Among the rocks and winding crags→→→

Among the mountains far away-
Once more the ass did lengthen out
More ruefully an endless shout

The long dry see-saw of his horrible bray.

What is there now in Peter's heart?

Or whence the might of this strange sound?

The moon uneasy looked and dimmer,

The broad blue heavens appeared to glimmer,

And the rocks staggered all about.

At the braying of an ass-truly, the moon has too much to do in this business. Peter, in revenge, resolves to throw the donkey into the water, but meets 'a startling sight' in the pool. After many equally pertinent inquiries, touching this sight, it is asked,

Is it a party in a parlour?

Crammed just as they on earth were crammed

Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,

But as you by their faces see,

All silent and all damned!

We suspect the conclusion is a pun on a water dam, but for the rest of the verse we again profess our ignorance of meaning, never having seen such a damned, silent, face-betrayed, punch-sipping, tea-drinking party in a parlour on earth, as is here alluded to. But after all, reader, what do you think the spectacle at the bottom of the river really is? It is, in short, the drowned body of the ass's

master.

Ah well-a-day for Peter Bell!-
He will be turned to iron soon,
Meet statue for the court of Fear.

Would not Bell-metal be more appropriate?

He falls into a trance, but wakes, again and 'feels the glimmering of the moon,' (still harping on the moon.) He then mounts the ass, and trusts to the wiser brute to find out the dead man's relatives. The cry of a wood-boy, distrest,' by looking at a dark cave, and shrieking fearfully in consequence of discovering this appalling and wonderful phenomenon assails them on their route, and here our ass, which, like the Devil in Milton, may fairly challenge the post of hero in competition with Peter Bell the potter, proves himself an uncommon scholar, for

Of that intense and piercing cry
The listening ass doth rightly spell;
Wild as it is he there can read
Some intermingled notes that plead
With touches irresistible;

This miraculous power in the ass works conviction in his rider, who from observing such knowledge in a beast, begins to think vengeance and visitation for his past crimes will overtake him. They trudge on, and one of their pieces of landscape is thus poetically described:

The rocks that lower on either side
Built up a wild fantastic scene;
Temples like those among the Hindoos,

And mosques, and spires, and abbey windows,
And castles all with ivy green.

But the enchantment of this scene is to come:

And while the ass pursues his way,

Along this solitary dell,

As pensively his steps advance,

The mosques and spires change countenance

And look at Peter Bell.

Would it not have been more natural if Peter Bell had changed countenance and looked at them? Peter's next alarm is at a dancing leaf,' where there is no tree nor bush, and his next at a drop of the ass's blood, as stated in our outset. The next fact in

this poem, whence the supernatural is excluded, is in an episode about a word self-written in flame upon a pious book which a' gentle soul' was reading; and the next again, introduced with due solemnity, for

The ass turned round his head-and grinned—

is the appalling process' of a 'murmur pent within the earth,' and occasioned by a troop of miners blasting with gunpowder some twenty fathoms under ground.' The next conscience strik. er is a ruined chapel, which reminds Peter of that 'in the shire of Fife,' where he married his 'sixth wife.' The last of all is an apparition of himself, and of a Highland girl whom he had seduced to death. What is most remarkable in this place is, that the ass does not heed these imaginary terrors:

Calm is the well-deserving brute,

His peace, hath no offence, betray'd;

What however crowns Peter's compunction and remorse is a voice from the tabernacle:

Within, a fervent methodist

Is preaching to no heedless flock.

The poem now becomes, we doubt not with the best of meaning, but in truth very profanely sacred: the recognition of the ass by the drowned man's distracted family is however feelingly told, and with fewer puerilities than any other part, the sincere repentance of Peter Bell concludes the tale.

We gladly take our leave of it. There are perhaps half a dozen fine passages, but nothing can in our mind redeem the besetting absurdity of the whole. It convinces us more and more that the system on which Mr. Wordsworth builds his rhyme is radically wrong; that no talent can render that pathetic which is essentially

ludicrous, nor great which is decidedly vulgar, nor delightful which is glaringly disgusting. That any thing like genius should be employed on such a mass of folly as Peter Bell presents, is indeed both astonishing and vexatious. Having no view of it but as a gross perversion of intellect, we have freely delivered our sentiments: we should be sorry to hurt the author's self-love by applying the argumentum ad ridiculum, but considering his example as most injurious to the poetic character of our country, we cannot compromise our public sense of the error so far as to spare our personal feelings.

S

ART. X.-Memoir of Madame de Genlis.

[From the New Monthly Magazine.]

TEPHANIE FELICITE DUIREST DE SAINT AUBIN was born in the year 1746, near Autun, in the department of Saone et Loire. Though without fortune, she was distinguished on her entrance into life, for her personal attractions joined to a singular talent for music, and she soon gained introductions to several families of rank, though rather in quality of an artist than as a young lady of condition. Her situation afforded her the means of observing society, before fortune enabled her to fill that rank in fashionable life to which her acquirements so justly entitled her; thus, a perfect knowledge of the forms and etiquettes of the upper classes is discernible even in her earliest productions. Her accomplishments and personal graces soon attracted the notice of several exalted individuals; but, as it frequently happens, chance was the disposer of her hand. The count de Genlis, afterwards Marquess de Sillery, though he had never seen her, being struck with the style of a letter which accidentally fell in his way, conceived so high a sentiment of admiration for the writer, that he immediately made her an offer of marriage, and Mademoiselle de Saint Aubin became the countess de Genlis before she had completed her fifteenth year.

Whilst her superior talent commanded the admiration of the distinguished circles in which she moved, her ardent love of study induced her to shun the court and the frivolous society connected with it, and to devote herself wholly to the cultivation of science and the arts. She was too well aware of the advantages of a cultivated understanding, to neglect the education of her children. At an age when most young women of fashion think only of shining in the world, Madame de Genlis retired to the convent of Bellechasse, and devoted herself entirely to the education of her two daughters. In the year 1775, the eldest, who was then scarcely fourteen years of age, was united to the count de Valence, but shortly after her marriage the young lady was attacked with a dangerous fit of illness. Madame de Genlis was thus plunged into the deepest distress, and anxiety of mind joined to the fatigue occasioned by affectionate attendance on her child, produced a