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from the failure of her husband's mercantile speculations, and the brutality and fraud of lawyers and guardians, who cheated her of a provision for her large family; and her domestic sorrows are very touchingly told in the prefaces to the different editions of her poems. Aware, therefore, that her melancholy is no poetic fiction, though often very affectedly expressed, we can read her sonnets without that sickening sensation which is excited by the false and ridiculous sensibilities of the Della Cruscan School. These little poems are not constructed on the Petrarchan model, and have no right to the title of sonnets, unless every poem in fourteen lines may be said to belong to that species of composition. But fourteen lines or three quartrains, and a concluding couplet, do not make a sonnet, if Petrarch and Dante in the Italian, and Milton and Wordsworth in our own language, are to be taken as authorities. We shall not, in this place, enter into a discussion upon the subject, but shall simply observe, that in the metrical construction, and in the unity of design peculiar to the sonnet, these little compositions are all palpably deficient. But if they are not legitimate sonnets, several of them may be characterized as, at all events, very pretty and pleasing poems; for, though we once thought far more highly of them than we now do, we can still see something in them to admire. They have a feminine pathos, and a delicacy and tenderness of sentiment, that ought to save them from oblivion. Though the liquid smoothness of the versification, and the languid elegance of the diction, may not suit an ear accustomed only to the vigour and variety of later poems, we can remember that they highly gratified us in our younger days, and have still a kind of charm for us that we are almost ashamed to acknowledge. Perhaps early associations, a reference to the feminine qualities of the fair author's mind, and a sympathy for her distresses, make us willing to be pleased in defiance of an increased experience and a maturer judgement. We have no doubt that it was a perusal of these sonnets, (for such, as a matter of courtesy or convenience, they must be called,) that suggested those of Bowles, which are written in much the same strain of feeling, and perhaps with no great superiority, in point of strength and originality. The versification is rather more varied, and the metrical arrangement is, in some respects, a little closer to the Italian model, but they have met with much the same fate as those of Charlotte Smith. They as speedily ran through the same number of editions, and were almost as speedily neglected. A great Poet too, the author of Christabel, with whose own style they are so strikingly contrasted, has praised them with the same enthusiasm as did Cowper those of Charlotte Smith. Little dependence it seems is to be reposed on the individual judgments of poets upon each other, whether favorable or adverse. Waller saw nothing in Milton, but an old blind School Master, who had written a dull poem. Wordsworth and Coleridge think Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-yard a very meagre and commonplace production; and Byron insinuated that Pope was a greater poet than Shakespeare, and spoke very contemptuously of Spenser. When Doctors disagree, the general voice must decide upon disputed points, though even then we have no final

judgment, for the public is often as fickle as a child. This is very perplexing to the poet, whose life is one dream of ambition. His only consolation is the hope that posterity will be more calm and constant, and that when varying winds of contemporary opinion shall have died away, his bark may reach its destined haven, and rest securely upon the still stream of immortality. It is melancholy, however, to reflect how many who have once enjoyed a flattering popularity, and who have looked forward with a proud confidence to such a consummation, have passed from the memories of men like a summer cloud. Charlotte Smith, elegant and refined, as she is, is rapidly sinking into oblivion, and in a very few years will no doubt be utterly forgotten. In the mean time, as we have spent a pleasant half hour over her little volume, let us show our gratitude to her gentle spirit, by such praises as we can conscientiously award her, and refresh the memory of our readers with a few favorable extracts.

The following little poem has been quoted by Bowles and Leigh Hunt, (poets of very different tastes and habits,) with considerable praise:-

Sighing I see you little troop at play,

By sorrow yet untouched, unhurt by care;
While free and sportive they enjoy to-day,
Content and careless of to-morrow's fare.
O happy age! when hope's unclouded ray

Lights their green path, and prompts their simple mirth,
Ere yet they feel the thorns that lurking lay*
To wound the wretched pilgrims of the earth,
Making them rue the hour that gave them birth,
And threw them on a world so full of pain,
Where prosperous folly treads on patient worth,
And to deaf pride, misfortune pleads in vain!
Ah!---for their future fate how many fears

Oppress my heart and fill mine eyes with tears.

Mrs. Smith's knowledge of botany, to which by the way she has addressed a Sonnet, is displayed in a very pleasing manner in several of her poems, and she rarely speaks of flowers without a minute fidelity of description, and the use of very graphic epithets. The following couplet is a specimen of the curious felicity of her botanical allusions. From the mapped lichen, to the plumed weed; From thready mosses, to the veined flower.

The "Sonnet written at the close of Spring" offers further illustrations of this peculiar character of her verse.

The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove,

Each simple flower, which she had nurs'd in dew,
Anemonies, that spangled every grove,

The primrose wan, and harebell mildly blue.

*This is a sad sacrifice of grammar to rhyme.-Ep.

No more shall violets linger in the dell,
Or purple orchis variegate the plain,
Till Spring again shall call forth every bell,

And dress with humid hands her wreaths again.
Ah, poor humanity, so frail, so fair,

Are the fond visions of thy early day,

Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care,
Bid all thy fairy colours fade away!

Another May new buds and flowers shall bring;
Ah! why has happiness-no second Spring?

Mrs. Smith's study of flowers led her much into the open fields, and she has shown herself to be a very minute and delicate observer of external nature. The following brief passage taken from one of her sonnets is extremely picturesque.

And sometimes when the sun with parting rays

Gilds the long grass that hides my silent bed,

A tear shall tremble in my Charlotte's eyes.

It reminds us of a very beautiful touch of Coleridge's pencil in the annexed lines.

But the dell,

Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate

As vernal corn-field, or the unripe flax,

When through its half-transparent stalks at even,

The level sunshine glimmers with green light.

There is a happy expression in the following line, which has been borrowed by a living poet.

The night-flood rakes upon the stony shore.

Bowles, in describing a night scene (in his Grave of the last Saxon),

says:

all is silent, save the tide that rakes

At times the beach.

The following address to the North Star has more vigour than Mrs. Smith usually displays:

TO THE NORTH STAR.

To thy bright beams I turn my swimming eyes,
Fair, favourite planet, which in happier days
Saw my young hopes, ah, faithless hopes !-arise,
And on my passion shed propitious rays.

Now nightly wandering 'mid the tempests drear
That howl the woods and rocky steeps among,
I love to see thy sudden light appear

Through the swift clouds-driven by the wind along:
Or in the turbid water, rude and dark,
O'er whose wild stream the gust of Winter raves,
Thy trembling light with pleasure still I mark,
Gleam in faint radiance on the foaming waves!

So o'er my soul short rays of reason fly,

Then fade-and leave me to despair and die.

The following verse, is at once forcible and melodious :

Oh! my lost love! no tomb is placed for thee
That may to stranger's eyes thy worth impart;
Thou hast no grave but in the stormy sea,

And no memorial but this breaking heart!

We quote the next sonnet, for the sake of the neat turn of its concluding couplet:

TO FANCY.

Thee Queen of shadows! shall I still invoke,
Still love the scenes thy sportive pencil drew;
When on mine eyes the early radiance broke
Which showed the beauteous rather than the true :
Alas! long since those glowing tints are dead,
And now 'tis thine in darkest hue to dress
The spot where pale Experience hangs her head
O'er the sad grave of murdered Happiness!
Through thy false medium then no longer viewed,
May fancied pain and fancied pleasure fly;
And I, as from me all thy dreams depart,
Be to my wayward destiny subdued;
Nor seek perfection with a poet's eye,
Nor suffer anguish with a poet's heart.

We will give one more extract, and close the volume.

TO NIGHT.

I love thee, mournful, sober-suited Night!
When the faint moon, yet lingering in her wane,
And veil'd in clouds, with pale uncertain light
Hangs o'er the waters of the restless main.
In deep depression sunk, the enfeebled mind
Will to the deaf cold elements complain,
And tell the embosom'd grief, however vain,
To sullen surges and the viewless wind.
Though no repose on my dark breast I find,
I still enjoy thee-cheerless as thou art;
For in thy quiet gloom the exhausted heart
Is calm, though wretched; hopeless, yet resign'd.
While to the winds and waves its sorrows given,

May reach-though lost on earth-the ear of Heaven!

It will be seen, we think, from these extracts, that though not to be placed in the first class of English Female Poets, Mrs. Smith deserves more attention from the public than she is now likely to obtain. She is not to be compared to the Lady Minstrels of the present day, (to the powerful Joanna Baillie, the wild and fanciful L. E. L. or the refined and spirited Hemans,) but her poems may, nevertheless, be occasionally referred to with pleasure, as the effusions of a chaste and cultivated mind.

STANZAS,

WRITTEN IN THE FIRST PAGES OF AN ALBUM, PRESENTED TO THE AUTHOR.

What shall be written here?

What in these pages shall the weak hand trace?
Shall it record the source of many a tear-
Paint the heart-wounds-the spirit's baffled race?

Dark shadows flit along

Fitful across the white, unsullied page!

What shall the Minstrel sing ?-he hath no song
Youth's ears to charm-to cheer the cares of age.

What shall be written, then,

Where measures sweet and soft should find a place;
Where visions, bright beyond the common ken,
The poet's magic melody should trace?

Mine is a wretched store,

The beggar's banquet of unsavoury things
The rose of pleasure decks my lyre no more,
For grief the cypress o'er it wildly flings.

Love is no theme for me

There is a frenzy in the very name;

It points to blood-and death-and agony,-
It mutters madness, and it whispers shame!

Friendship!-alas, alas!

One month ago, and I could for it twine

Garlands of song and praise. Joys swiftly pass,

And now I scatter incense on its shrine !

And Fame? Oh, hearts may feel,

(When hopes are bright, and youth is burning high,)
The soldier's ardour, and the patriot's zeal,

But they-like other joys-the wretched fly.

What shall be written here?

Who shall the wreaths of song in sunshine twine?
I would not stain the pages with a tear,

But leave the book for lighter lays than mine.

August 1830.

R. CALDER CAMPBELL,

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