pencil of Mr. D. O. Hill, an artist who is said to be intimately acquainted with the subjects he has depicted, and alive to all the poetical feelings which they inspire. We ourselves can speak to his fidelity in several of the illustrations before us.

The edition will extend to twenty-one parts at 2s. a part; each containing four plates and forty pages of letter-press. When completed and bound, it will present two large octavo volumes, or one of a very massive appearance. It will be the most beautiful and valuable collection of the Ayrshire bard's works, with what illustratively relates to him or them, that has ever met the public eye; and will be truly a national work.

"The Book of Scottish Song," (which waits for notice,) and "The Works of Robert Burns," come both appropriately from one house.

ART. XXII.-Gerald: a Dramatic Poem. By J. W. MARSION. Mr. MARSTON's name has obtained a wider notice since we received this Poem than, perhaps, he ever dreamed of, although the bardic tribe, like his own Gerald, have high aspirings and generally a sufficient appreciation of the powers of their own genius; for his "Patrician's Daughter" has been welcomed on the stage in a manner calculated, we should think, to meet his fondest hopes, and to stimulate him to still better efforts and more successful results.

Gerald has not been written for the theatre, but is a poem in a dramatic form, and as such it will contribute to Mr. Marston's fame. It is indeed a fine and impressive creation of genius. We use the term in its legitimate and strict sense; for there are not merely many passages in it that abound with warm and healthy feeling, and others that exhibit an imagination of power and compass, but an originality without which the term genius can never properly be attached to any name. The best test that we can bring to bear at any time, so as to pronounce judgment upon the character of a work of imagination, especially if cast in a dramatic shape, is to inquire of ourselves, after a perusal, whether that perusal was a task; whether we met with things to be lamented in the course of the reading; and above all, when the end was reached, what has been the effect produced upon our sympathies, what the emotion and the sentiment? Now, we dare not say that we had not our regrets while going through this poem, that we did not meet with things that we considered unseemly; but this we are free to declare, that with the exception of some conceits of language, and also, perhaps, some affectations of thought, we rose from the perusal with great satisfaction,with delight and a feeling of being bettered; in short we read the poem at one sitting, without a pause, with eagerness, and without knowing at what rate the time had sped, or that it had sped at all.

Gerald is a poem of genuine beauty, that is, beauty that will abide reexaminations,-and manly instructiveness. It teaches as well as touches; its teachings belonging to the stern realities of this life, and even to the proper preparation for that which is to come. The hero of the piece has not only genius, fondly indulging its highest aspirations, but he is overweeningly confident of its power, and obtrusively proud of its aims.

cure him of his airy notions and to prove to him that the loftiest nature may have ample scope and sufficient occasions among the realities of the world, in the exercise of the homely, and in looking forward to what is the grand destiny of the feeble as well as the gifted in mind, requireth that he encounter life as it is, and be qualified by its severe truths. Accordingly, after giving us the youth of genius on the eve of leaving home, all self-sufficient, oracular of triumph, and scorning the less imaginative of his fellow men, we find him in the capital with a work that is to lead the world captive in thought and admiration. In the third part, that world rebukes and bitterly teaches him until he despairs. In the fourth, he returns broken in spirit and to be a pathetic sorrower; and in the last, to be gradually weaned of all vain imaginings, of all morbid sensitiveness, and to hail death as the passing from a state in which man's boundless aspirations can never realize their legitimate aim, to one of inexhaustible excellence, of unspeakable glory and love.

Edith is the betrothed of Gerald, and engages the chief interest after him. She is as sensible and considerate as she is lovely and sweet; being necessary not only as a winning contrast to her lover, but a rebuker, and the occasion of the most touching lessons at the hour of his final departure. We now present two or three short specimens, and readily adopt those which have been selected by some of our right-judging contemporaries. The first gives us Edith insisting upon more measured expressions of love than Gerald has been uttering, when he is introduced to us.

Gerald. A novel grief

To mourn excess in love!

Edith. Love me as one

Of Nature's common children-weak enough
To need support, unwary, wanting counsel,-
A weeping, smiling, trusting, doubting girl,
With good intents, marred in the acting oft,

With heaven-ward thoughts that fail through weariness,
And droop the wing, while yet the glance aspires ;-
Having much cause for gratitude,--but more

For

penitence,-sincere ; yet how infirm !

Oh, let me, love! be oftener in thy prayers,
And in thy praises less.

This is from the same scene:

Edith. Ah, love! I would not have these moods recur
In which thou spurnest so the humbler minds.

Perchance there is less difference in men,

Than the great deem. The coarse, unlettered hind,
May not discern the truth in thy high words,
Nor in thy fine and airy thoughts perceive
The feelings they unfold. Yet trust me, love!
Feelings are like in most men, though the forms
Which they put on be diverse. Sympathies
Most deep, and holy, often stir in hearts

That have few words to shape them; even as streams
Embosomed in the earth, refresh its plains;
While the broad river, open to the sun,

And mirror of his light, can do no more!

Hear how Edith addresses him when battling with the world, and the bitterness of reality, fill his soul :

"Gerald! will you despair? Though to achieve

A seeming greatness, you have vainly striven,

Yet to be great, is nobler: I believe

The Poet's fount of thought not chiefly given.

That passing groups should praise its crystal stream;
But his own human heart to fertilize-

A source of fruitful goodness-not a dream
Of transient beauty for admiring eyes.

"It may be both, I grant: for e'en the sight
Of what is fair hath a refining spell;
But if 'tis shunned of men, its own delight
Should in itself be found in many a dell
Where trees o'ershade, and only zephyrs stray,
Bloom flowers of sweetest breath and loveliest hue
Unpraised-scarce pilgrims know that leafy way-
Only the stars their screen gaze kindly through.

"While sympathy the heart that else might break,
Can solace, or while hands the toil can share
Of the o'erburthened; while the lip can speak
Of truths eternal, and the region where
The evil no more trouble, and at rest
Are all the weary; while these tasks divine
Invite, what poetry may be expressed,
Although the poet never write a line!

"In him whom children love, whose serious talk
The village elders prize at evening's close;

In whose companionship a wonted walk

Rich with new meanings and fresh aspects grows,
Whose gracious influence ever intercedes

With man for man-the beautiful is real;

His loveliest fancies shrine themselves in deeds,

And in his heart is guested his Ideal."

Here followeth a vindication of poetry, happily felt and forcibly put:

Gerald. Fiction! Poetry

Lives but by truth. Truth is its heart. Bards write

The life of soul—the only life. Each line

Breathes life or nothing. Fiction! Who narrates

The stature of a man, his gait, his dress,
The colour of his hair, what meats he loved,
Where he abode, what haunts he frequented,
His place and time of birth, his age at death,
And how much crape and cambric mourned his end-
Writes a biography! But who records

The yearnings of the heart; its joys, and pangs,
Its alternating apathy, and hope;

Its stores of memory which the richer grow
The longer they are hived; its faith that stands
Upon the grave, and counts it as a beach

Whence souls embark for home; its prayers for man:
Its trust in Heaven, despite of man-writes fiction!
Get a new lexicon.

THE

MONTHLY REVIEW.

FEBRUARY, 1843.

ART. I.-The Military Operations at Cabul which ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January, 1842. With a Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan. By Lieutenant VINCENT EYRE. Murray.

LIEUT. EYRE, of the Bengal Artillery, late Deputy Commissary of Ordnance at Cabul, and whose name is honourably recorded in Lady Sale's celebrated letter, was not only on active service in Cabul at the first outbreak of the 2nd November 1841, which led to the death of Burnes and others, but was a prominent actor in the dreadful occurrences of the period. In fact he continued in the cantonments, taking a prominent share in all the events, till the retreat was commenced on the 5th of January, 1842, accompanying the disorganized army and disastrous route until the ladies and their husbands were delivered up to Mahomed Akber, as the only chance for the preservation of their lives. He was wounded in the first of the unhappy attempt on Beymaroo, one of the lamentable affairs in the ill-fated operations, rendering him incapable of service; when, following his wife, he underwent the captivity, incarceration, and various forced journeys of the other prisoners, till the advance of General Pollock and their own determined minds effected an escape to Cabul on the 21st of September.

The volume before us contains the earliest authentic account that has reached this country of the deplorable series of disasters, and we may add disgrace, of the operations in Affghanistan; being in the form of a journal, from the first outbreak in Cabul, and closing with the seven days' retreat, from the 6th to the 13th of January,when the destruction of upwards of seventeen thousand of our fellowcreatures was completed; viz., five thousand fighting men and twelve thousand camp-followers; the horrors appearing to have exceeded even what were at first regarded by cool minds in England as exaggerated reports. Can it much aggravate the reader's feelings to learn that the pecuniary value of the magazine abandoned at Cabul is estimated by Lieut. Eyre at nearly a million sterling? Besides the VOL. I. (1843) NO. II.

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