unfitness of which for poetical narrative appears so obvious, should have been such a favourite with poets and novelists? Not that we mean to deny that the more general conception of the position of a being on whom the curse of immortality on earth has been suddenly imposed, is not in itself a striking, an impressive one. Nothing is more easy to conceive, than that in the hands of a person whose mind combines the philosophical element with the poetical, the picture of such a being,-solitary in the centre of a busy world, disconnected from all human hopes, passions, sympathies,-longing to die and to rest, to follow where all that made life worth living for had gone before him, may be capable of producing the profoundest emotion. In fact, this has been done by Godwin in his St Leon, where the train of reflection of such an immortal-at first joyous and exulting in the boundless expansion of his powers, gradually sinking into sadness, and at last into an overpowering sensation of loneliness and desolation-is depicted with a deep knowledge of the human heart, and in a strain of touching and mournful eloquence.

But though those prospects of futurity, in which the victim of immortality throws forward his views into unborn ages, appear impressive and effective when thus embodied merely in reflection; or although a momentary glimpse of his situation may be one of solemn interest, there are insuperable obstacles to any attempt to pursue the fortunes of such a being through the lapse of centuries, or to exhibit his feelings in successive detail. Not to mention the extreme difficulty of carrying onward our sympathies to the third and fourth generation, even with the assistance of a connecting link in the existence of some one who survives them all, such an attempt invariably leads to one of two things, either a dreary monotony, or a variety obtained at the expense of consistency and truth. To represent such a being, labouring under the consciousness that he has nothing in common with those around him, as susceptible and impassioned to the last-loving, hating, grieving on, with the same unabated energy, at the latest stage of his career, as when first he commenced his restless pilgrimage-if it enable the poet to vary the scene, deprives the conception of all which redeems it from the character of absurdity, or gives it a distinctive character. The whole effect of such an idea on the mind, is produced by the simple representation of that state of callous, impassive, unalterable desolation into which such a creature sinks-a state of gloomy, tideless tranquillity, and weatherbeaten hardihood of soul, which nothing can agitate, nothing overpower. What human passion, indeed, should interest him over whom the experience of centuries has passed?-what new grief plough deep

where so many old ones have left their furrows?—what attachment bind him who soon feels that he can now love nothing truly, because he now loves nothing with that identity of heart, that abandonment of soul, wherein resides the charm and essence of the feeling? In the tomb of my wife and children,' says St Leon, as he follows out to its dreary consequences the effects of the secret of the stranger, I felt that my heart would be buried. Never, never, through the count'less ages of eternity, should I form another attachment. In the happy age of delusion, happy and auspicious, at least, to the cultivation of the passions, when I felt that I also was a mortal, I was capable of a community of sentiments, of a going forth of the heart. But how could I, an immortal, hope hereafter to feel a serious and expansive feeling for the ephemeron ' of an hour!'

And yet what St Leon held to be impossible, is exactly what Mrs Norton has attempted to do; and in consequence of this, so completely has she extinguished all that is peculiar in the situation of her hero, that, but for his own information on the subject, which he occasionally volunteers rather needlessly, we should never, in this loving, fighting, marrying Jew, discover that we had to do with the wretched, passionless wanderer on whom the curse had lighted. Susceptible to the last, he wanders on, still falling in love, and vowing eternal constancy to Edith of England, Xarifa of Spain, Miriam of Palestine, and Linda of Castaly, and burying them all in succession ;-filling up the gaps between these piping times of peace by fits of desperate fighting; though it is not always easy to discover for what cause, or under which king, our Bezonian draws his sword, except that

'Where'er a voice was raised in freedom's name,
There, sure and swift, my eager footstep came;'

as if to such a being, absorbed in the selfishness of his own misery, the watchwords of freedom and slavery would not be equally indifferent. We find him lending a hand in the struggles of ancient Rome with her Gothic invaders-in the warfare of Spain with the Moors-and in our own civil wars, not to mention a campaign or two in Ireland; in all of which he behaves with that bravery which might be expected from one who knew that his life was safe, though his head might perchance be broken.

Homer has been celebrated for the variety of the modes in which he dispatches his heroes; Mrs Norton's ingenuity in vary

ing the death of her heroines is scarcely less remarkable. The case of Edith, the first favourite of this Jewish Bluebeard, is distressing; and, in fact, by uncharitable persons would certainly be regarded as a case of murder. Isbal and she have been living a life of great domestic comfort for years, when, like the Ancient Mariner, all of a sudden, suadente diabolo,

his frame is wrench'd

With a strange agony,

That forces him to tell his tale,
And then it leaves him free.'

That is, free to marry again; for the consequence of this most unnecessary disclosure is the immediate death of his wife. Xarifa, her successor, dies a natural death, expiring in fact before he has time to tell her his story, which he is on the point of doing. His third wife he makes quick conveyance with-not feeling himself prepared, at the time, with any satisfactory solution of the question which he saw she was about to put to him, why he exhibited no symptoms of advancing age as well as herself. The last dies, we hardly know how or when, except that the catastrophe takes place off the Irish coast;—an uncertainty which we share with the person who should know most of the matter, Isbal himself;-for never, it seems,

'shall his heart discover

The moment her love and her life were over;
Only this much shall the lost one know,-
Where she hath departed he may not go."

Mrs Norton must really excuse us, if we have freely expressed our sentiments as to the absurdity of the subject on which her powers, and those of no inconsiderable order, have been wasted. If we did not think her poem indicated genius, we should not have noticed it at all: we have done so, because we feel satisfied that, with a more congenial subject-one calmer, commoner, less ambitious-a very different whole would have been the result. It is strange how difficult it is to persuade ladies that their forte does not lie in representations of those dark passions, which, for their own comfort, we hope they have witnessed only in description. And yet none can fail at last to perceive that the concentration of thought and expression necessary for the drama; the stately steady grandeur required in the epic poem; nay, the knowledge of the worst as well as the best features of the beart, required for the more

irregular narrative poem, are hardly ever found in the poetry of women. Would Mrs Norton only confine herself to simpler themes, instead of plunging beyond the visible diurnal sphere, there is much in this poem that assures us of her complete success;—many individual pictures, clear, graphic, picturesque ; many passages of tender feeling breaking out into a lyrical form, which we think discover much grace and a great command of versification. Of this, indeed, there is perhaps too great a variety, since the volume exhibits specimens of every measure in the English language; and perhaps a few more. As a proof how well Mrs Norton can paint, take the following striking description of the Wanderer looking in at the door of an English cottage on a Sabbath morning, while the inmates are at church:

A lowly cot

Stood near that calm and consecrated spot.
I enter'd it: the morning sunshine threw
Its warm bright beams upon the flowers that grew
Around it and within it-'twas a place

So peaceful and so bright, that you might trace
The tranquil feelings of the dwellers there;
There was no taint of shame, or crime, or care.
On a low humble couch was softly laid
A little slumberer, whose rosy head
Was guarded by a watch-dog; while I stood
In hesitating, half-repentant mood,

My glance still met his large bright watchful eye,
Wandering from me to that sweet sleeper nigh.
Yes, even to that dumb animal I seem'd

A thing of crime; the murderous death-light gleam'd
Beneath my brow; the noiseless step was mine;
I moved with conscious guilt, and his low whine
Responded to my sigh, whose echo fell

Heavily as 'twere loath within that cot to dwell.'

On the death of Edith, his first love, the Jew engaged with ardour in the struggle between the Spaniards and the Moors; and after a fierce combat in the neighbourhood of Granada, meets with a female figure sitting on the field of battle, and wailing over the dead. This is Xarifa, who, in some very touching stanzas, pours out her lamentations for her husband who had fallen in the fight:

My early and my only love, why silent dost thou lie?
When heavy grief is in my heart, and tear-drops in mine eye,
I call thee, but thou answerest not, all lonely though I be,
Wilt thou not burst the bonds of sleep, and rise to comfort me?

'O wake thee, wake thee from thy rest, upon the tented field, This faithful breast shall be at once thy pillow and thy shield; If thou hast doubted of its truth and constancy before,

O wake thee now, and it will strive to love thee even more.

If ever we have parted, and I wept thee not as nowIf ever I have seen thee come, and worn a cloudy browIf ever harsh and careless words have caused thee pain and woe— Then sleep-in silence sleep-and I will bow my head and go.

But if through all the vanish'd years whose shadowy joys are gone, Through all the changing scenes of life I thought of thee alone; If I have mourn'd for thee when far, and worshipp'd thee when near, Then wake thee up, my early love, this weary heart to cheer!'

These are sweet and natural verses, particularly the latter two; and we can assure Mrs Norton, far more effective than whole pages of gloomy grandeur and despair. As another specimen of her better powers in these gentle delineations, we shall extract her picture of the close of Xarifa's life, under the conviction that some fatal secret preyed upon her husband's mind, and her parting address as she dies by his side near the Guadalquivir.

One eve at spring-tide's close we took our way,
When eve's last beams in soften'd glory fell,
Lighting her faded form with sadden'd ray,

And the sweet spot where we so loved to dwell.
Faintly and droopingly she sat her down

By the blue waters of the Guadalquivir,
With darkness on her brow, but yet no frown,
Like the deep shadow on that silent river.
She sat her down, I say, with face upturn'd

To the dim sky, which daylight was forsaking,

And in her eyes a light unearthly burn'd

The light which spirits give whose chains are breaking !

*

And a half smile lit up that pallid brow,

As, casting flowers upon the silent stream,

She watch'd the frail sweet blossoms glide and go,
Like human pleasures in a blissful dream.

And then, with playful force she gently flung
Small shining pebbles from the river's brink,

And o'er the eddying waters sadly hung,

Pleased, and yet sorrowful, to see them sink.
"And thus," she said, " doth human love forget
Its idols-some sweet blessings float away,
Follow'd by one long look of vain regret,
As they are slowly hastening to decay;