Deride me not, but softly tell That makes my soul in absence see No form but thine, no thought but thee.” ART. XIV.-The Spirit of Discovery; or the Conquest of Ocean. A Poem, in fice Books: with Notes, historical and illustrative. By the her. WM. LISLE BOWLES. 8vo. pp. 250. "INEED not perhaps inform the reader," says Mr. Bowles," that I had before written a canto on the subject of this poem; but I was dissatisfied with the metre, and felt the necessity of som connecting idea that might give it a degree of unity and coherence. "This difficulty I considered as almost inseparable from the subject; I therefore relinquished the design of making an extended poem on events, which, though highly interesting and poetical, were too unconnected with each other to unite properly in one regular whole. But on being kindly permitted to peruse the sheets of Mr. Clarke's valuable work on the History of Navigation, I conceived (without supposing historically with him that all ideas of navigation were derived from the ark of Noah) that I might adopt the circumstance poetically, as capable of furnish ing an unity of design; besides which it had the advantage of giving a more serious cast and character to the whole." We did not peruse this paragraph with out surprize. The work which Mr. Bowles praises, is, in our judgment, one of the very worst compilations upon which good paper was ever wasted; and as for Noah's ark, how it was to give unity of design to a long poem upon any other subject than the deluge, appeared inexplicable. The poet is himself apprehensive lest his readers, upon an inattentive survey, might imagine there was any carelessness of arrangement, and he has therefore prefixed a general analysis of the several books. "I'm sure the design's good; that cannot be denied. Besides, sir, I have printed above a hundred sheets of paper to insinuate the plot into the boxes." Except Burns and Cowper, no poet of the present reign has been so generally admired as Mr. Bowles. It will be found, we believe, on a reference to the old reviews, that few or none of the poems which they have highly praised have ever become popular; and that they have usually noticed, with censure or scorn, those which have been fairly received into the funds of English literature. This we well remember was the case with Mr. Bowles's first publications. The critical dancingmasters of the public attended to nothing but his feet; he did not move to the old tune of te-te te-tum, which was the tune they had been taught, and they did not like his new steps. Foreigners, therefore, who form their opinions from the English 7 way journals, knew not the name of Bowles, It is now twelve years since Mr. Bowles first collected his separate poems into a volume; from that time his reputation has been progressive: not that his subsequent pieces have been better than his first, but they have had the same characteristic beauties, and beauties of a higher he had usually chosen. But coming for kind were not required for such subjects as ward at present ou other ground, and with loftier claims, he feels and expresses a diffidence of success. "But after all, at a time so unfavourable to long poems, I doubt whether the reader will have patience to accompany me to the end of my circum-navigation." If he do, and if this attempted, should be as favourably received much larger poetical work than I have ever as what I have before published has been, I shall sincerely rejoice. "At all events, in an age which I think has produced genuine poetry, if I cannot say Ed io, anchi, sono pittore; it will be a cousolation to me to reflect, that I have no otherwise courted the muse, but as the consoler of sorrow, the painter of scenes romantic and adulterated feelings, and religious hope. interesting, the hand-maid of good sense, un "It was at first intended that the poem should consist of six books; one book being assigned to Da Gama, and another to Columbus. These have been compressed; which I was the more inclined to do, as the great subjeet of the discovery of America is in the hands of such poets as Mr. Southey and Mr. Rogers. errors, which the author need not print out. author's early poems. "Awake a louder and a loftier strain! Beloved harp, whose tones have oft beguil'd My solitary sorrows, when I left The scene of happier hours, and wander'd far, A pale and drooping stranger; I have sat (While evening listen'd to the convent's bell) Ou the wild margin of the Rhine, and woo'd Thy sympathies, a-weary of the world.' And I have found with thee sad fellowship, Yet always sweet, whene'er my languid hand Pass'd carelessly o'er the responsive wires, While unambitious of the laurell'd meed That crowns the gifted bard, I only ask'd Some stealing melodies the heart might love, And a brief sonnet to beguile my tears! "But I had hope that one day I might wake Thy strings to higher utterance; and now Bidding adieu to glens, and woods, and streams, And turning where, magnificent and vast, Maia Ocean bursts upon my sight, I strike, Rapt in the theme on which I long have mus'd, Strike the loud lyre, and as the blue waves rock, Swell to their solemn roar the deep'ning chords. "By the bold tones And bid the seas resound my song! And thou, Father of Albion's streams, majestic Thames, Amid the glitt'ring scene, whose long-drawn The poem opens with the resting of the ark upon Ararat: no part of the whole is this; but it would have been as well if better exccuted or more impressive than the author had trusted his reader to find out the more striking expressions, without marking them in capitals. "ALL WAS ONE WASTE OF WAVES, that Earth and its multitudes: the ARK alone, Flit o er the face of deluge as it shrinks, Of boundless waters, the Sun's orient orb IN NATURE'S LONELINESS! But oh, sweet Hope, Thou bidst a tear of holy extacy Start to their eye-lids, when at night the Dove, Weary, returns, and lo! an olive leaf Wet in her bill: again she is put forth, When the sev'nth morn shines on the hoar abyss :- Due ev'ning comes: HER WINGS ARE HEARD NO MORE! The dawn awakes, not cold and dripping sad, But cheer'd with lovelier sunshine; far away The dark-red mountains slow their naked peaks Upheave above the waste: IMAUS gleams: Fume the huge torrents on his desert sides: Till at the awful voice of HIM WHO RULES THE STORM, the ancient Father and his train On the dry land descend. Here let us pauseNo noise in the vast circuit of the globe Of pasturing herds, or wandering flocks; nor Is heard; no sound of human stirring: none song Of birds that solace the forsaken woods From moru till eve; save in that spot that holds The sacred Ark: there the glad sounds ascend, And Nature listens to the breath of LIFE. The fleet horse bounds, high-neighing to the wind That lifts his streaming mane; the heifer lows; Loud sings the lark amid the rainbow hues; The lion lifts him muttering: MAN come; forth And to the GOD who stretch'd the radiant He kneels upon the earth-he kisses it; bow, He lifts his trembling transports. * Mr. Bowles writes the name Da Gama improperly: it should either be Gama, or Vasco a Gama at full length. The present state of the inhabited world is now contrasted with its melancholy appearance immediately after the flood: in this there are some very happy lines; but it is too episodical, and interrupts the order of a poem which is of itself too desultory. After the sacrifice, the angel of destruction appears to Noah in a dream; his speech aims at sublimity without success. He says "My hall Deep in the centre of the seas received The victims as they sunk! Then with dark joy I sat amid ten thousand carcases That weltered at my feet." There is nothing sublime in this: what follows is better. He denounces future miseries to mankind occasioned by that very ark, which has now been the means of their preservation; and he sets before him, in vision, the conduct of the Spaniards in America, and the wretchedness occasioned by the slave-trade. Mrs. More has said of the poets, with an illiberality more congenial to her sect than to her own better nature, that whenever any mischief was to be done, they, to do them justice, had never been backward in furthering it. She might more truly have said, that whenever the interests of humanity were concerned, the poets have been ready and disinterested advocates; and the Slave Trade, her own subject, should have occurred to her recollection. In this part of his poem Mr. Bowles cails the native Americans sable: we know not whether this be one of the inaccuracies for which he has taken out a licence in his preface. The bloody character of the Peruvians should not have been insisted upon in the notes; that of the Mexicans may be said indeed to "Justify the ways of God to man." Whoever is well acquainted with the superstition of that people, the most bloody which ever was established, must regard the overthrow of the Mexican empire, horrible as its circumstances were, as one of the happiest events, as well as one of the most splendid, in the history of mankind. Waking from this vision Noah ascends Mount Ararat (which the author conceives to be the Indian Caucasus) led by an angel, who, purging his mortal sight, spreads out the world below him in prospect. We are reminded of Milton by this Pisgah view, and by the geographical picture; and perhaps there is nothing in which Milton can so safely be imitated. The On the illumin'd scene. So Charity Look down upon his works; and while far off rise Glory to God on high, and on earth peace, From shore to shore, from isle to farthest isle, Peace and good-will to men. "Thou rest in hope, And Him with meekness and with trust adore!" "He said, and spreading bright his ampler wing, bow'd Flew to the heav'n of heav'ns; the meek man Adoring, and, with pensive thoughts resign'd, Bent from the aching height his lonely way." Thus far there has been a personage is the poem, to whom every thing refers: but he disappears here at the end of the first book. The second is judiciously opened by a reference to his prophete view of futurity: the progress of society, and the rise of commerce, is then detailed upon the historical hypothesis of Bruce. Tyre leads to an eulogium of England, and the book closes with an Ode upon the siege of Acre. This digression, the an thor says, appeared to him not only natural, but in some measure necessary, to break the uniformity of the subject. This is fairly confessing that the subject is bad. The ode is in every respect a very poor composition. In the notes to this book some reasons are offered for supposing Ava to be the Ophir of scripture. In one fact, however, Mr. Bowles is mistaken: he says there is no appearance of ancient magnificence in Sofala, no marks of for mer arts and civilization. This is cettainly erroneous: there were, when the country was first discovered by the Fortugueze (and probably still are), large ruins resembling those in Upper Egypt. The third book opens beautifully, in Mr. Bowles's peculiar manner. "My heart has sigh'd in secret, when. I thought hat the dark tide of time might one day close, gland, o'er thee, as long since it has clos'd Egypt and on Tyre: that ages hence, on the Pacifick's billowy loneliness, nose tract thy daring search reveal'd, soine isle ight rise in green-haired beauty eminent, d like a goddess, glittering from the deep, reafter sway the sceptre of domain om pole to pole; and such as now thou art, Thaps New Holland be. For who shall say at the Omnipotent Eternal One, at made the world, hath purpos'd? Thoughts like these, ough visionary, rise; and sometimes move noment's sadness, when I think of thee, country, of thy greatness, and thy name, ong the nations; and thy character, ough some few spots be on thy flowing robe) loveliest beauty : I have never pass'd rough thy green hamlets on a summer's and love Liberty, would walk thy vales, and sing ar holy hymms; whilst thy brave arm repeird' tility, e'en as thy guardian rocks - the dash of Ocean; which now calls , Eng'ring fondly on the river's side, 50 my destin'd voyage; by the shores Asia, and the wreck of cities old, yet we burst into the wilder deep Gana; or the huge Atiantic waste bold Columbus stem; or view the bounds die, stretching to the southern pole, thee, benevolent, but hapless Cook!" The history of the empires succeeding e is here touched on: the fall of BabyCyrus, and Alexander. This conqueror, s career, "proceeds to the last river he Panjab, the Hyphasis, which de scends into the Indus, the sources of which are near the mountains of Caucasus, where the Ark rested." In this manner does the author, like Mr. Bayes, insinuate his plot into the reader. A Bramin meets him, and sings an ode describing the Hindoo account of the deluge, and prophesying his conquest of the seas. The Hindoo mythology is too little understood as yet to be fit for many practical allusions. Commerce is represented as standing on the Pharos of Alexandria, and calling to all nations. But a wider scene opens, and the poet at once passes to the commencement of modern discoveries by prince Henry, and relates the romance of Robert a Machin and Anna d'Arfet. This story, which Mr. Clark has related as sober his tory, is not well managed. The lovers are thus described in the island. seem'd Not of the hours that time could count. A kiss That made the world, that planted the first pair Of the scal'd dragon, and the golden fruit." It is not very clear who trembled at the first kiss which was ever given in the island of Madeira: if the woods be meant, it is the most injudicious imitation we ever remember. The lines upon the lady's tomb have been admired, and we shall therefore copy them, without feeling any admiration ourselves. INSCRIPTION.ANNA D'ARFET. "O'er my poor Anna's lowly grave No dirge shall sound, no knell shall ring, But angels, as the high pines wave, Their half-heard miserere sing! No flow'rs of transient bloom at eve The maideus on the turf shall strew; Nor sigh, as the sad spot they leave, Sweets to the sweet! a long adie! 572 But in this wilderness profound, O'er her the dove shall build her nest, And Ocean swell with softer sound A requiem to her dreams of rest! Ah! when shall I as quiet be, When not a friend, or human eye, Shall mark beneath the mossy tree The spot where we forgotten lie? To kiss her name on the cold stone, Is all that now on earth I crave; For in this world I am alone-- Oh lay me with her in the grave." "Robert a Machin, 1344.--Miserere nobis, Domine." The poem passes on to the voyages of Gama, Columbus, and Magalhaens. Thus far only the triumphs of discovery have been described; the last book speaks of its evils. The slave-trade is again noticed, the conquest of Mexico and Peru, the buccancers, and the triumphs of destruction by sea, how many perished by shipwreck or by savages, which leads to the fate of Magalhaens, Ferouse, and Cook. The advantages resulting from Cook's voyages are then stated; and, as he first ascertained the proximity of America to Asia, this circumstance leads us back from the point whence we set out, THE ARK OF NOAH, and hence we are partly enabled to solve, what has been for so many ages unknown, the difficulty respecting the earth's being peopled from one family. The poem having thus gained a middle and end, the conclusion of the whole is, that as thus uncertainty in the physical world has been by DISCOVERY cleared up, so all the apparent contradictions in. the moral world shall be reconciled. We have yet many existing evils to deplore: but when the SUPREME DISPOSER's plan shall have been completed, THEN THE EARTH, which has been explored and enlightened by discovery and knowledge, shall be destroyed; but the MIND OF MAN, rendered at last perfect, shall endure through all ages, and JUSTIFY HIS WAYS FROM WHOM IT STRUNG. At the conclusion of the poem is this expostulation addressed to England, which we copy, willing to turn from a plan so truly ill-contrived, to notice the merit of the execution. of miserable men' Leaving the groans Behind! And free thyself, and lifting high The charter of thy freedom, bought with blood, Hast thou not stood, in patient apathy, A witness of the tortures and the chains up Yes, thou hast visited the caves, and cheer'd The Hesperian regions, and hast soften'd much Who bids the stormn rush, and it sweeps to earth The nations that offend, and they are gone, To see Dr. Darwin's Loves of the Plants and Temple of Nature coupled with the Slave Trade as a national sin, is somewhat curious! As the poem contains little more than two thousand lines, the author need not have been apprehensive that its length would be a hindrance to its success. Its failure is imputable to its plan, than which nothing can be clumsier. It is extraordinary that Mr. Bowles did not recollect the fate of Thomson's Liberty, a case precisely in point. Thomson was a true poet; his subject admitted of splendid parts; but he worked upon a bad plan, and the poem has added nothing to his reputation. The best parts of this spirit of discovery are those which are most in the author's original manner, and in this style of writ ing he is not likely to be excelled. The odes are the worst; he has no ear for metrical music. The blank verse, where it imitates Milton, imitates him with judg ment, and is as little unhappy as any such |