We appreciate as highly as we ought the landed interest of this country, although we would not have every channel of public emolument turned into that capacious vortex. The success of this great country depends upon a variety of means, which must, in a great degree, be left to their own unrestricted operation to accomplish the purpose of the national welfare, and the danger generally is not of parlia mentary neglect, but of an outrageous legislative interference, that, by compulsory expedients frustrating private enterprise and exertion, disappoints the public good, which is but the aggregate of individual prosperity. We have just mentioned an occasion when 500,000l. was withdrawn most impoliticly from the Sinking Fund of the day to gratify the agricultural class of society: Mr. Preston now proposes that three millions should from a like fund, and for the same purpose, be substracted; and he further, if we rightly comprehend him, advises progressively the entire exhaustion of the Sinking Fund, although he admits, that if it were immediately attempted, the only effect would be "increasing the difficulties of the times, by depreciating the 31. per cent. annuities to 307. per cent. and increasing the real value of money to 10l. per cent. per annum." (p. 3.) Such measures of permanent mischief are, he thinks, to be justified by the temporary pressure; yet, in accommodation to the land-owners, the Property Tax, by which they were principally affected, was withdrawn; a corn bill, agreeable to their own wishes, was passed in opposition to the remonstrances of a whole people; and further, during the present reign, rents have augmented so as to quadruple the income of these proprietors; 3,500,000 acres have been added to the vast extent of cultivation, and 1591 acts of parliament have secured to them the benefit resulting from this conversion of sterility to exuberance. Finally, the improvements in the management of the soil and its produce, founded on the important discoveries in natural history and philosophy, chemistry, mechanics, and general science, have rendered even space and time subservient to the art in which they are conversant; so that while to the field is given the fertility of the garden, the operations of the former are conducted with the precision and rapidity of the latter. To conclude, we would persuade Mr. Preston, in the language of the "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," that "every system which endea vours either by extraordinary encouragements to draw towards a particular species of industry, a greater share of the capital of the society than what would naturally belong to it, or by extraordinary restraints to force from a particular species of industry some share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it, is in reality subversive of the great purpose which it is meant to promote. It retards instead of accelerating the progress of society towards realwealth and greatness; and diminishes instead of increasing the real value of its annual produce of land and labour." To these more enlarged and philosophical views of political economy, exhibited by the learned professor, we cannot avoid adding the home prospect afforded by Mr. Rose in his late publication, the merits of which no doubt Mr. Preston will at the proper opportunity discuss: "My own view of the subject," says that experienced statesman, “ is, that the grower of corn should be very effectually protected to the extent of the price being high enough to ensure his being able to pay a fair rent: but when that object shall be secured, the consumer should then have every possible facility of supply at a price not exceeding the protecting ART. 11.-The Poetic Mirror; or the Living Bards of Britain. London, Longman and Co.; Edinburg, John Ballantyne, 1816. 12mo. pp. 275. ONE night (according to roguish Rabelais) Garagantua found great difficulty in composing himself to sleep, reflecting upon some mighty engagement to take place the next day: on this occasion, his friend and companion Friar John resorted to a somniferous expedient he had often before successfully tried,-he sang psalms to him, et commencans le premier pseaume sur le poinet de Beati quorum s'endormirent et l'un et l'autre." The greater part of the work before us will effectually answer the same purpose on any future oc casion. Those who have not, and perhaps some few of those who have, read The Poetic Mirror, are yet to be informed, that the author intends it as a joke at the expense of " the living bards of Britain:" certainly almost as dull a one as ever forced a smile from a good-natured public. The advertisements in the newspapers would have led us to imagine (from the imposing form in which they are drawn up,) that the editor of this collection had, in fact, "procured from the authors the various poems of which the volume is com posed; but the perusal of a single stanza from any one of them is sufficient to remove the deception, and shew, that in so stating, the author means to be ironical; and that it is merely a re-repetition of a stale trick to please the great vulgar and the small, by the ridicule of peculiarities or excellencies beyond the comprehension of this soi-disant imitator and his puny admirers. Sunt qui nihil suadent quàm quod se imitari possunt; to satisfy them, every body must write down to the level of their understandings. We say that Mr. (for he has had the wisdom not to disclose his own, though he has made very free with the names of others) is a soi-disant imitator, because we believe that, with regard to the majority of the fourteen pieces, which Occupy 275 pages, they are no more like the originals they would persuade us they follow, than St. Margaret's Church is like Westminster Abbey, near to which it seems placed in contrast, tirat its poverty and insignificance may be sure not to escape notice. If it be no proof of his wit, it is a proof of the author's wisdom, to have inserted in the beginning of his volume a table of contents, or key, by which he points out what par ticular poet he intended to imitate in each of his compositions: syllable-marking asterisks, ambiguous initials, or dubious dashes, would not, he thought, have been sufficient; and he therefore plainly asserts, in words at length, that Lord Byron, Mr. W. Scott, Mr. Southey, &c. favoured him with such and such contributions: here, however, the author was an imitator, if no where else; for he copied this piece of prudence from the wretched portrait-painter mentioned in the Tatler, who inscribed under each head the individual it was intended to represent. The writer of The Poetic Mirror has so far accommodated himself to readers who, without such a statement, might never have discovered that an imitation was intended: with regard, however, to many of the pieces, he ought, we think, to have gone yet a step further, in order to explain in what the imitation consists: a running commentary, with a quotation of such passages as the author fancied were parallel, would have been of great assistance. This remark does not, indeed, apply equally to all the different specimens: some are mere burlesque parodies, which, though very deficient both in humour and correctness, still possess sufficient resemblance to their archetypes not to be always mistaken; while as to others, we must CRIT. REV. VOL. IV. Nov. 1816. 3 N do the author the justice to say, that he has caught something of the style of the original.-This is one of the truest tests of good poetry; and we may venture to say, that poetry that will not bear it, will not bear the still more certain test of time. Homer and Virgil have both been successfully travestied; but who, in ancient or in modern times, has been able to imitate the vigorous descriptions of the one, or the dignity and harmony of the other: Shakspeare has found burlesquers of his Richard, his Hamlet, and his Lear; but his imitators have been laughed to scorn, as presumptuous and incapable pretenders. The same result, in a less degree, will be found in the volume on our table, which comprises supposed productions by Lord Byron, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, James Hogg, S. T. Coleridge, Robert Southey, and John Wilson; and with our opinions regarding the merits of most of these writers the readers of the Critical Review are by this time pretty well acquainted: we may, therefore, with the less scruple say, that the author of The Poetic Mirror has best succeeded in copying the manner of Walter Scott and the Ettricke Shepherd, because their excellencies or peculiarities were more attainable and imitable by a man of mediocre talent, than those of the other poets we have enumerated: the pieces in this volume intended to be like their productions, may tolerably fairly be termed imitations, while those in which Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge are meant to be ridiculed are mere low burlesques, and the latter especially a vulgar and abusive parody. And why is this the case?-not because the author of The Poetic Mirror meant to be more uncivil to the latter than to the former, but because he found (as others would find, even were they possessed of higher abilities) that the beauties of the latter were in truth not to be imitated, and he has, therefore, been under the necessity of confining himself to the ridiculous copying of certain singularities of style, which it is acknowledged on all hands they possess: the singularities of thought, and most of the beauties of expression, were unattainable. This, as we said before, is one of the best tests of what is really admirable in poetry.-Before we proceed further, we will insert a specimen or two from the pieces which we allow bear a distant resemblance to the works of Mr. W. Scott and Mr. Hogg; but only, we should premise, to the worst parts of their works, more especially of the former gentleman. The first is from an Epistle to R. S****; we conjecture, meant to be written upon the plan of the Epistles at the beginning of each canto of Marmion. Say, shall we wander where the swain, "How gay the scenes of harvest morn, Cold is the heart when charms like these By bloomy bank or barren scaur; |