in Gray's Bard. This is adventurous; but the poet is not unsuccessful:

"Let there be light!" so spake th' Almighty word,
And streams of splendor gush'd around their lord.'

Darwin in his Botanic Garden has the two following lines:
"Let there be light," proclaim'd the Almighty lord:
'Astonish'd chaos heard the potent word,' &c.

If it be supposed that Mr. Wrangham intended to imitate these lines of Dr. Darwin, it will be admitted that he has excelled them; for the effect of the fiat is in Mr. Wrangham more direct and more appropriate.

We believed ourselves to recognize the same two lines of Darwin, in a poem called the Sorrows of Seduction,' which we lately had the mortification to review, in the following curious disguise:

"Let earth arise," so spake the Almighty lord;

And unfledg'd earth in chaos heard the word.'

Having just hinted at a possible imitation of Dr. Darwin, we take this opportunity of remarking that Mr. Wrangham is one of the few fortunate admirers of that fascinating poet; he has too much judgment and too much taste to be spoiled by that seductive and dangerous model.

The lines following the two first are nervous and harmonious; in them Mr. Wrangham indulges a supposition that India was the first country visited by the sun's nascent beams: as this is possibly, though not necessarily true, we are not disposed to refuse to him his poetical privilege:

Forth at that bidding, emulous to run

His course of glory, sprang the giant sun;
And, as he chased the scattered rear of night,
O'er the wide east diffused his earliest light,
There, while his infant beam on Ganges play'd,
Or hung entranced o'er Agra's spicy glade,
India, first cherish'd with his orient ray,

Shone like a bride in brightest colours gay.' . 1.

P.

He then touches upon the deluge; after which India rose from the waters,

⚫ and rich in nature's charms,

Rush'd to the sun's invigorating arms.'

After a description of the appropriate richness of Indian vegetation, which is judiciously varied from its antediluvian luxuriance, we are presented with a pleasing view of the early blessings which science lavished upon India:

Ere revelation flamed from Sinai's height,
India rejoiced in patriarchal light.
Tradition there preserved, from sire to son,
That first great truth, that God is all and one;
'Till fabling bards the mystic song began,
And learned darkness stole oh wilder'd man.
His rigid code then selfish Brahma framed,
Then for his caste it's proud distinction claim'd;
Waved o'er the cheated realm his ebon wand,
And scatter'd demon-meteors through the land.

'So born and fed 'mid Turah's mountain-snows,
Pure as his source, awhile young Ganges flows;
Through flowery meads his loitering way pursues,
And quaffs with gentle lip the nectar'd dews;
Till, swoln by many a tributary tide,

His waters wash some tall pagoda's side:

Then broad and rough, 'mid rocks unknown to day,
Through tangled woods where tigers howl for prey,
He foams along; and, rushing to the main,

Drinks deep pollution from each tainted plain." P. 3.

In a poem of such great merit we are unwilling to descend to the littleness of verbal criticism; otherwise it might be observed in the lines just extracted, that 'cheated' is too familiar, too mean a term. 'Demon-meteors' must also be condemned, not only as objectionable in itself, but also as bringing to our recollection the demon-ape' of Dr. Darwin, and other combinations of demons which so frequently disgust us in the Botanic Garden. But instead of pointing out to the reader a few petty faults and inaccuracies, we have great pleasure in calling his attention to those musical and stately lines in which the simile of the Ganges is couched, in the concluding verses of the same extract.

We are next told that though the selfish and degrading su perstition of Brahma corrupted the patriarchal purity of the Hindoos, still, were they not deserted by the sun of science; but were highly eminent even in those early days for their knowledge of medicine,of astronomy, ethics, music, and poetry.

Nor only Science led her Indian youth

With patient labour to the throne of truth,
Studious by just gradation to refine
From brute to human, human to divine;
But Fancy rapt him on her wing of fire

To realms sublime, where bliss outruns desire;
Where streams of crystal feed ambrosial flowers,
And love and glory speed the laughing hours:
There to his hand resign'd her powers of sway,
Her lyre, and liquid voice, and numerous lay;

Gave him her holy hymn, her lofty ode,
To sing the chieftain or to sound the God:
Gave him her stately epic, to rehearse
His Arjun's fame with all the pomp of verse;
When Krishna, mounted on the hero's car,
Bore him secure amid the clanging war :
Gave him her drama's tearful vase, to pour
O'er virtue's sacred anguish pity's shower;
When soft Sacontalà in Canna's grove
Press'd the fond pledge of her Dushmanta's love,
Or as her steps yet linger'd on the green
(Of all her infant sports the happy scene)

Wept o'er each flower, her garden's blameless pride,
Kiss'd the young fawn that sorrow'd by her side;
And still, to ease her bosom's bursting swell,

To flower and fawn prolong'd the sad farewell.' P. 4.

We have selected the above passage, independently of its intrinsic merit, on account of the beautiful allusion in the concluding lines to that elegant drama 'Sacontalà, or the Fatal Ring.' The pleasure which we derived from the perusal of it in sir William Jones's translation made so strong an impression upon our minds, that we earnestly recommend it to our poetical readers. It may be doubted whether even the simple and elegant dramas of Greece can furnish a passage surpassing the delicacy, the sensibility, and the pathos of that, of which Mr. Wrangham has judiciously given the outlines in five admirable couplets.

But the happy ages of Indostan were blasted by the irrup tions of Mahmoud the Gaznevide, and Tamerlane.

And did oblivion quench this hallow'd fire?
May genius like the brood of earth expire?,
With meteor front a few short moments soar,
Then sink forgotten, and be seen no more?
Ah! no: by age undimm'd his cheek appears;
His laurell'd brow defies the assault of years.
"Twas Mecca's star, whose orb malignant shed
It's baleful ray o'er India's distant head.

• Fleet from the stormy west, on steed of flame,
To blast her bloom the Bactrian archer came:
Beside him rode, twin ministers of fate,
The lust of empire and religious hate;
And still, where'er their sanguine banners flew,
Spring's rosy splendours vanish'd from the view..
Her last faint throb of struggling life to crush,
See from the north remorseless Timur rush!
His drear morasses, and his boisterous sky,
The fire-eyed Tartar quits without a sigh:

Calls his grim squadrons from their realms of snow,
And leads where zenith suns strange lustre throw':

By Bember's foot, who dreary, black and bold,
Stands the stern guard of Cashmere's vale of gold;
Through bowery Matra, where the Gopia nine
In love's disport with youthful Krishen join:
There while the mango from it's stem they tear,
Or light with saffron wreaths their raven hair,
O'er India's plains the myriad swarms expand,
And science, genius, fancy fly the land.' P. 5.

The Mohammedan religion is properly enough designated by the star of Mecca;' but that star' should not have changed a few pages afterwards into Medina's crescent, espe cially as it is there compared with the mild flame of Zion's

star.'

The six lines descriptive of the desolating progress of Mahmoud are extremely good; still we think that the twelve irruptions of that conqueror into Hindostan might have been dwelt upon more at length with great effect. Gibbon, who is himself almost a poet, has related in his most splendid manner some events respecting this monarch, which in Mr. Wrangham's hands might have been rendered highly ornamental, and perhaps have furnished matter for an episode, which is a desideratum in this poem; for, although the writer touches upon the heads of most of the principal events that have occurred in India from the creation down to the present times yet a slight appearance of irregularity, an occasional transition to something, not indeed irrelevant, but yet not necessarily connected with the subject, might perhaps have improved the effect of the whole.

We included the last fourteen lines of the above extract, not for their superior excellence, but because we think them more faulty than any other part of the poem. This, we presume, is equitable criticism. In the first place, why is Tamerlane said to quit his drear morasses?" Tamerlane quitted Samarcand, the delightful situation of which is proverbial in the east, and is celebrated by every oriental poet. It is situated in the rich and fertile vale of Sogd, so famous for its fertility, and the exquisite richness of its fruits, that they were made an article of commerce, and exported to Persia, and even to Hindostan. But, supposing Tamerlane to quit his drear morasses,' it is no wonder (making every allowance for the amor patriæ, ratione violentior omni') that he quitted them without a sigh;' but if Samarcand be that paradise described by the poets, we should indeed wonder that he could leave it without reluctance, were it not that, in the breast of the hero, the love of power is paramount to the love even of grapes and melons. But the real fact is, Mr. Wrangham wrote this weak line thoughtlessly, and, as we strongly suspect, for

the convenience of a rhyme. Again: Tamerlane's soldiers employ themselves in tearing the mango from its stem.' To this we can have no objection, as the mango is an excellent fruit, otherwise it could in no degree contribute to the expul sion of science, genius, and fancy.' But they are said also to light with saffron wreaths their raven hair;' i. e. to relieve the jetty blackness of their hair. (N. B. Mr. Wrangham should have good authority for this use of the verb to light.) Now this description may be thought objectionable, as these 'grim squadrons' are called from 'realms of snow,' and as light hair is a characteristic of the natives of cold climates. But still perhaps Mr. Wrangham is defensible; for the realms of snow' alluded to are no doubt those mountainous countries to the northward of Samarcand, which are in the same latitude with mount Caucasus, and which form a part of the chain extending across Asia from Mingrelia to Kamschatka: and the Circassians, who are in the vicinity of Caucasus, are remarked both by historians and poets, for their long, black, shining hair.

Immediately after the last-quoted lines follows a simile, in which there is a peculiarity that does not by any means recom→ mend it; for it applies both to what precedes and follows it, and so applies that it is not easy to know which part the author designed exclusively to illustrate. And at the lines,

• Before the fiend the groves of Eden bloom,
Behind him scowls a desert and a tomb,'

he should have referred us to the third verse of the second chapter of Joel, from which the images are translated: The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.'

Mr. Wrangham now laments the state of degradation to which Hindostan was reduced under the iron yoke of the Mohammedans; and tells us that it was not till after the irruption of the Mongol Tartars, that those superstitious and sanguinary rites of the Hindû religion, at which humanity shudders, were introduced. This is not quite correct. It is certain that the altars of the goddess Calica had been glutted with human blood long before the religion of Mohammed was even heard of in India. Could it be in consequence of the devastations of Mahmoud, or the despotism of Tamerlane, that the deluded Hindû threw himself under the wheels of Jagrenaut, and through death thus obtained a safe passport into paradise? or that

'from her babes by savage Brahmins borne, The widow'd mother clasps her consort's urn;