The servant's look-the table that reveal'd

His letter sent to CONSTANCE last, still seal'd,

Though speech and hearing left him, told too clear

That he had now to suffer-not to fear. He felt as if he ne'er should cease to feelA wretch live-broken on misfortune's wheel:

Her death's cause-he might make his peace with Heaven,

No! imaged in the sanctuary of your breast,

There let me smile, amidst high thoughts at rest;

And let contentment on your spirit shine,

As if its peace were still a part of mine : For if you war not proudly with your pain,

For you I shall have worse than lived in vain.

But I conjure your manliness to bear

I ask you by our love to promise this, And kiss these words, where I have left

a kiss,

The latest from my living lips for yours."

We have said, we believe, somewhere in this hasty, but hearty article, that we are critics; but we really have no wish to prefer any especial claim to that character. Critics, however, or no critics, we may be permitted to say a very few words on the merits of Theodric, a Domestic Tale. We cannot help expressing our extreme surprise, that a man so highly gifted as Mr Campbell, could have contemplated "pure affection breathing household laws," that is to say, could have surveyed domestic life, its relations and events, and, after all, shewn himself unable to invent any more interesting and impressive exemplification of them, than what is exhibited in this pretty but insignificant poem. There actually seems something here too like a barrenness, not of invention only, but absolutely of feeling; his mind takes no hold either of the more stirring, or the more still humanities; and if human life can present to the imagination and heart of a true poet nothing better than this, between Dan and Beersheba the betthe sooner we complete our journey ter; nor does the invention of printing seem one likely to be turned to much has evidently been pathos, but all the more account. Mr Campbell's object suffering is provoking rather than affecting; sorrow assails man and woman from mere misunderstanding, and an unlucky game of cross purposes; nobody is to blame, and everybody is punished; most excellent people are brought together by mere accident, and immediately set about marring each other's happiness; the tide never suits; the time is either half an hour too soon or too late; a sort of small fatality attends each petty movement of

the somewhat insignificant personages; we almost are tempted to believe that Theodric and Constance must have been married on a Friday; and if they took a wedding-jaunt, we offer a trifling bet that their carriage broke down, and that they had some difficulty in getting into an inn towards the fall of evening. It is impossible for any reader of a good heart to peruse, without discomfort, the record of such perplexing misfortunes; but he is not, cannot, be rivetted to the narrative by any spell of which Mr Campbell seems to be in possession; on the contrary he reads on, merely that he may get rid of a dark but dull riddle; and at last he cannot but be a little angry with Mr Campbell, for putting to death two such beautiful and innocent young creatures as Constance and Julia, who might have suffered much affliction, and yet not missed the world so very unsatisfactorily as they do, both maid and bride. The tale illustrates nothing that we can discern worth illustrating, and whatever beauty and pathos there may be in a few passages, they are rendered almost entirely ineffective by the unfortunate, unpoetical, and unphilosophical choice of the situations in which the interlocutors are placed; a free, full, and unrestrained sympathy, is never once excited during the whole poem; the heart of the reader is almost always pained, and his understanding dissatisfied; and if he recalls to his remembrance any of the more affecting incidents in his own life, or in the lives of any one of his friends, he will feel that they were somewhat different in their nature, and their accompanying circumstances, from those in Theodric, although here a poet of acknowledged genius has employed his utmost power of fiction to invent, embellish, and adorn, with mournful beauty, a tale, illustrative of the feelings, fates, and fortunes, that fluctuate over the bosom of domestic life.

With respect to the style of execution-language, versification, imagery, &c., we have already said that we could not help reading the poem with much occasional delight. There are many most graceful, elegant, and beautiful lines, that could have been distilled only from the pen of a true poet -but the composition wants pith, fire,

The

and life. It is often, we are sorry to say it, most elaborately feeble, andwill the world believe, even when they see them with their own eyes?-sprinkled with manifest and undeniable Cockneyisms. Mr Campbell has frequently sounded the very lowest key in the gamut of poetry, just as Mr Wordsworth has often done in the lyrical ballads. But Mr Campbell has in all such trials miserably failed, and is no better than a boy playing upon a sycamore-pipe. Mr Wordsworth has, in almost all such trials, admirably succeeded, and the low simple note has been from a harp-string. great Laker sometimes drives his fine, true, bold theories rather far, but he never fails to smite the heart, and generally his simplicity is sublime. Mr Campbell's genius is altogether of a different stamp; he must have the air of elegance to breathe, or he gasps, chokes, and dies. In Theodric he often tries to be homely, familiar, conversationally narrative, to write as if in a newspaper of daily occurrences, marriages, births, and deaths. Then is he uniformly silly and conceited, and that too to such an unfortunate extent, that we verily believe this poem, with all its tenderness and beauty, is now in the greatest jeopardy, and can only be saved by Mr Jeffrey from being damned. That ingenious and amiable critic has written for the next Edinburgh a most laudatory critique on Theodric. That is quite right. Mr Campbell is his friend-and what is friendship without active offices? It is the bounden duty of every good critic and honest man to praise his friends to the skies-if they be men of genius, even although they write indifferent poems. Abuse your friends in private, in the small social circle round the hearth, and in the misty silence of the Cigarium,-but in public let eulogy be the order of the day. Often have we held up to universal and well-merited admiration in Maga, the man whom in Ambrose's we have anatomized; and the author whom we have not left the likeness of a goose in the Sanctum Sanctorum, often and often have we bowed and congeed down the front steps of No. 17, Prince's Street, as if he had been, at the very least, a Phoenix.

tinguishing Periodical, abused him most grossly, we might say diabolically; while, though no one can suspect us of any friendship or affection for any of the curs and crosses of Conduit-Street, yet it will be equally conceded to us, that Campbell's works have frequently received from us the highest meed of praise; and that of one of them, viz. the Ritter Bann, we alone, of all the periodicals, had the honour and the manliness to take any notice whatever. We are pleased to see that Tom has reprinted the whole of this beautiful poem in this volume of his. This is digressing, however: proceed we with our parallel.

First, then-both are Scotchmenlowly in birth-in manners-and in conversation. As for birth, Campbell was born in the Goose-dubbs of Glasgow-Hogg in the hills of Ettrick, in Muckrath, which, being interpreted, signifies, the PLACE OF THE SWINE. In this the Shepherd is superior, inasmuch as the smell of the green hills, and the sight of the clear waters, is far preferable to the muck of the Molendinar, and the gardyloo of the Gallowgate. Again, Hogg's sire was a herd; one who dwelt among the pastoral images to be derived from sheep and kine, from the objects which called forth the poetry of a Moses, the warblings of a Theocritus, and the mimic elegances of a Virgil and a Pope. Campbell's progenitor was a cotton-spinner, a pursuit which calls much more for jennies than genius, and which, though useful, is but mechanical, and without the slightest twist of poetry. Homer (and every true poet, in fact) draws similes everlastingly from sheep, and beautiful things they are; who, in the name of the Nine, ever drew anything from the cotton-mill, except so much per cent on capital sunk? With respect to conversation, Campbell has much to say in his favour that Hogg has not. Campbell has kept company with Lady Morgan, and such like fashionables; and no doubt has thereby contracted fine habits of speech and manners. Hogg has been, at least of late, very much with us; and it is excessively blameable, that he has not acquired our tone and delicacy. But it is ill teaching an old dog new tricks, as Lord Chester

field says.

verse.

Again, both are writers of prose and Here is a difficult scale to balance. Hogg never wrote anything so

stupid as the Balaamite portion of the Pleasures of Hope, nor (anything quite so pathetic as O'Connor's Child. Campbell, on the other hand, was never guilty of such poetry as what composes the Mountain Bard; nor did he ever soar to the height of Bonny Kilmeny. In prose, Hogg's Tales and Campbell's Lectures on Poetry may pretty well stand against one another, both being equal outrages against literature. So likewise let the Jacobite Relics pair off with the Specimens of English Poetry. One work remains which sets Hogg far above the laureate of Lanark. Hogg wrote the Chaldee MS. !-Impartial justice, therefore, directs that we, in this respect, should exalt the horn of the Shepherd.

Thirdly, both are great Magazine writers. Hogg boasts that it was he who established this Magazine—it is a bounce on the part of the Shepherd; but beyond doubt, he has been an eager writer in it. Campbell contributes to Colburn, having succeeded the late Jack Polidori in that employment, at a fixed wage of five pounds, fifteen shillings, and fourpence halfpenny per week. It would be absurd were we to point out Hogg's inferiority in this particular.

Fourthly, Campbell is occasionally asked to Holland-House; there he gets now and then a side look from its lady, which fills him with gratitude. Hogg has ere now taken toddy fist to fist with a duke, and thought little about it. Campbell breakfasts with Redding and Fudgiolo, and other such highones. Hogg sups at Ambrose's. This round is, we opine, in favour of the Bard of Benger.

Fifthly, Hogg can drink eight-andtwenty tumblers of punch-Campbell is hazy upon seven. Four to one on the Shepherd.

Sixthly, Hogg is a Tory-Campbell a Whig. Hogg always said that the English would beat the French, and he was right-Campbell said that the French would beat the English, and he was wrong. Hogg despises the Edinburgh Review, and he is right -Campbell calls it in his Magazine a noble, critical work, and he is wrong. Other instances are needless. The follower of the Macallummore is here inferior beyond all chalks. But,

Seventhly, with which we mean to conclude our laboriously wrought-up parallel-in which our readers must perceive that we have most carefully