"In robes of green, fresh youths the concert led,
Measuring the while with nice emphatic tread
Of tinkling sandals, the melodious sound,

Of smitten timbrels; some, with myrtles crowned,
Join'd the smooth current of sweet melody
Thro' ivory-tubes-some blow the bugle free,
And some at happy intervals around

With trumps sonorous swell the tide of sound;
Some, bending raptur'd o'er the golden lyres,
With cunning fingers fret their tuneful wires,
With rosy lips some press the syren shell,
And, thro' its crimson labyrinth, impel
Mellifluous breath, with artful sink and swell,
Some blow the mellow melancholy horn,

Which, save the knight, no man of woman born
E'er heard and fell not senseless to the ground,
With viewless fetters of enchantment bound.
The nodding trees its magick influence own
And, spell struck, drop their golden clusters down;
The forests quaver, and Elysian bow'rs

With pleasing tremors shed their fragrant flow'rs,

And spell chain'd brooks, that bound from steep to steep,
On jutting rocks, delay their headlong leap.“

There is enchantment in the very language, it never was excelled. The indecision of the melancholy Titiana, Oberon's queen, is admirably described:

"She curses, blesses, sues, and now commands,
Bids him begone, yet stays him with her hands,
Embraces him, then pushes him away-

Chides him for staying, and then bids him stay."

The "silver white," and "diamond bright" hills we think about the silliest splendours we have seen; but he makes up for them in the following:

true love was never sold

"Twere sacrilege to barter love for gold;
For love is sacred-'tis the gift of Heaven,

And only precious when 'tis freely given.“

The "hoarse," rustling of the ravens wing is admirable; but the shield of the giant meets with an unaccountable transforma

tion, now it is a "sable cloud," and now it is "sun-broad," which for the honour of common sense, we hope means something more than size. The idea of rainbow robes of light flung from the countless gems that lighted that little world upon all beneath it, is exquisitively beautiful, so is the "ocean of light."

There never was a poet who has not at some time sung of a bark, a skiff, or a pinnace, when she sails into port-chases the whistling brine, or eddying foam; but the following is quite as fine as any:

"To see that pinnace chasing with delight
The liquid emerald, and diffusing wide

Her golden glories on the quiv'ring tide
Swift o'er the lake she fled before the wind
And left a path of sparkling foam behind."

The means by which the knight discovers his mistres under her transformation is perfectly new and beautiful-She had been changed to a bird-after repeated attempts to call the attention of her knight, by fluttering and beating her wings against the cage, she sings one of those strains, which had once made knights drop their lances to hear-The knight remembers the notes, and liberates her and the restoration is conducted with great richness and skill-he kissed the plumy captive and it waked, warbled, and "shook its plumes of gold he invokes the powers. of Heaven to assist him in dissolving the spell, and the bird becomes a vapour-then a slender column-then from above

-loose golden tresses stream'd
now snow-white garments indistinctly gleam'd.

But

"He never loved who cannot fancy all.”

The convulsion of that emerald lake when Oberon looked frowningly upon it-the monsters, "That strode upon the clouds and sailed upon the storm"-Auster's rainy locks, and Boreas crowned with arctic snows, are sometimes very poetical, and sometimes very childish.

We would ask the author what he means by "yellow gold"page 72: occasionally we meet with lines that we cannot read, as

-her azure eye

mutely implored à favourable reply.

But we ask no explanation of these transcendant lines:

"And now Aurora from the climes of light

Ascending fair, showered gold and rubies bright
On sea and earth, and on Hyperion's road

At his forth coming blushing roses strew'd."

One of the happiest expressions we have ever seen to represent the winning magick with which one, who feels the whispering of melody, can call forth her tones, is this:

"From fretted lyres solicit tuneful sound."

The songs of the spirits, if we were not afraid of punning, we should say, the spiritual songs have nothing at all of that tricksy minstrelsy which should distinguish these sunbeam riders, and pipers on wheat straws they are all too earthly-the last line is the only tolerable one in the whole.

After Rinaldo recovers the maid

"A chariot like the dawn

Uprose at once, by milk white horses drawn,

Swift as from clouds the unfettered lightnings dart-
With thundering hoofs the fiery coursers start—
-and e'er the king of light

Had quenched his beam in ocean's billows bright,

The chariot gay a golden cloud became

And from their sight was rapt by steeds of flame.“

The last picture will remind the reader of Pierpont's:

"Clouds were his chariot and his coursers flame."

We find these same tip-toe gentry, the hills, "rustling" to the rising gale. "The wat'ry solitude" is great-but the crew of ruffians must have puzzled the poet confoundedly, for he declares, that they were "dreadful to behold." The pinnace seemed "the rainbow of the storm."

The placid morn her milky white dispread."
"All care, all spirit, sat the list'’niug knight,
His fancy free, and giddy with delight—
Rode on the wings of harmony."

The hermit's tale, with all its "procession of departed years" its battles, and its tempests, is highly respectable, until we come to this:

Dark, dark as raven's wing her train,

Red her cheeks, as roses-red.

which we declare to be downright plagiarism from Coleman:

"Tall like the poplar was his size,

Green, green his waistcoat was as leeks;
Red, red as beet roots were his eyes;
Pale, pale as turnips were his cheeks."

And the following is Walter Scott himself:

"So Rowland charged me fierce and fast-
So back recoil'd, and on the field,

Fell horse and horsemen, spear and shield.
Why did I spare the recreant's life."

The chase is spirited enough, until we come to these lines:

"My shield before my breast I flung,

And turn'd the feeble lance aside."

Which entirely contradicts the most favourable interpretation of the line which occurs in the commencement of the poem:

"Against the weak I ne'er uplifted shield."

Never were words or conceptions more like the glowing ef fulgence of the mornings in Anster-fair than these:

"Now morn, ascending from the sparkling main,
Unlock'd her golden magazines of light,

And on the sea, and heav'ns cerulean plain

SHOW'RD LIQUID RUBIES-while retreating night

In other climes her starr'd pavillion spread,
When they descried, O joy inspiring sight

The Mermaid Isle slumb'ring on ocean's bed,

With rosy canopy of low-hung clouds o'erspread."

In the following lines there is another of Walter Scott's flashes.

Nothing can be more contemptible than the following miniature copy of Shakspeare's littleness:

"Or said he falsely, and am I undone?

If it be false, the previous falshood hide
More dear to me than all that's true beside
If it be false, henceforth let falsebood be
My truth and truth be falsehood unto me—”

And this stoop for a Rhyme is unequalled:

"He is! by earth-and-Hell,

He is thy son the child of Cristabelle!"

And the following exclamation will remind the reader of the proclamation from certain Towers and Mosques, that the Sultan has dined and therefore the world may go to dinner

"Haste ye-haste away—

The king rejoices-let the world be gay."

Old Armigrand, makes an eloquent speech when he quaffs the rich juice, and

"From his loose locks shook off the snows of time."

But in the whole "extacy" there is not a line worthy of the poet, except the following:

"Ye rolling streams make liquid melody

And dance into the sea."

We have thus endeavoured to give a full analysis of "Crysta lina," which we are disposed to consider, even as it now stands,