improving. In the number of books in an epic poem, varying from six to two dozen, an odd number has been hitherto little known. It comes, therefore, as a gratuity in the present instance; and Mr Hoyle, surpassing Virgil himself in generosity, gives us thirteen books, as the conscientious baker gives thirteen rolls to the dozen.

Yet this generous profusion of an author in multiplying his pages, though it may please the purchaser who loves to have bulk of volume for his money, and may read as much or as little as he pleases, is sometimes rather troublesome to peevish critics: and we must honestly confess, that on the first perusal of this important article, our fortitude forsook us at the prospect of thirteen books, on which no ray of interest or entertainment appeared to dawn. Returning, however, to a sense of the duty and dignity of our profession, we resolved to scorn the trifling allurement of mere amusement, and apply our aged eyes to the task of measuring Mr Hoyle's poetical altitude, not by the random guess of our own calculation, but by the quadrant and plummet of Aristotelian criticism. After applying this surer test to the performance, our veneration for the poem has considerably increased.

Aristotle hath remarked, that the epic poem should be distinguished from history, by its poetical form, and by the liberty of fiction which it assumes. Whether the reverend author before us has sufficiently fulfilled this ordonnance with regard to fiction, we do not feel bold enough in so important a question to decide; but certain it is, that his poem will never be mistaken for the book of Exodus in scripture. In the first place, Exodus of the Pentateuch, is known to be an history; but the Exodiade is expressly named an epic poem in the title-page. In the next place, Exodus is divided into chapters of prose; Mr Hoyle's performance is divided into books of blank verse. In the third place, the bible Exodus is inspired; whereas the Exodiade of Mr Hoyle bears evident marks of human achievement.

Instead of failing in attention to the rule above-mentioned, it gives us pain to remark, that our author has gone a little too far in establishing the distinction between his work and holy writing. It behoved him, we think, as a grave divine, to have stuck closely, in all the important facts, to the text and order of Scripture. Every one knows how much of our interest in the original story of Exodus depends upon the ten plagues of Egypt. Of these, the stagnant and bloody waters were the first; and immediately after these, came the plague of lice; a visitation which, as coming home to the business and bosoms of men,' we have no doubt tormented the court of Pharaoh, more than all the nine other plagues put together. Where so much depended on the agency of those heaven-commissioned vermin, much ought to have been described.

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by the poet. The rage of Pharaoh, and the confusion of his seraglio under these tormentors, might have furnished sufficient horrors for the page of Mr Hoyle, or the pencil of Mr Fuseli. What does Mr Hoyle do? He is afraid to name them; he slurs them over by circumlocution. Now this, we think, is abandoning truth, scripture, and simplicity, without any apology; and making a cowardly submission to false and modern refinement. We trust we shall not be accused of national prejudices on so delicate a subject: but to suppress a whole plague of Egypt for the sake of a name, is really too much. No man who has had occasion to attend to the subject, will pretend to consider it as insignificant. We dare swear Pharaoh himself thought with Goldsmith, that These little things are great to little men.

All that is said, however, of this sublime plague, is hurried over in a slight allusion in a speech addressed to Pharaoh, by one of his jugglers, or high priests, or courtiers-for at this period, those professions seem not to have been divided. The Egyptian court show-men, it is well known, had maintained for some time an unequal rivalship with Moses, whose miracles they made ingenious, but fruitless, efforts to imitate,-either by collusion, as some suppose, with the devil, after the manner of Dr Faustus,—or, like Boaz and Breslaw, by slight of hand deception. The latter, we think, is the more orthodox supposition. Howsoever it happened, they were able to play off but a few entertainments, when the genuine miracles of Moses laid their mountebank quackeries in the dirt. Like true courtiers, they left their deluded king to scratch his head without assistance, in the disstreses which they had advised him to bring upon himself; and, when the vermin plague arrived, were obliged to confess, that they had neither witchcraft nor hocus-pocus to disenchant his enemies. Observe, however, how one of those detected rogues addresses the monarch in the usual style of court adulation.

• Mightiest of monarchs, the defire and dread
Of nations on the well-appointed ftate
That girds thy throne magnificent, we gaze,
Till gazing grows to labour; yet our fight
Finds no fatiety, while ruled in peace
By thine experienced fceptre.—We admire
Thine equity and fage paternal care;
To thee, as prefent godhead, we devote
Our art and service; to thy bidding task
Our utmost faculties, of no mean power
By proof evinced. When Aaron turned to blood
Egyptian ftreams, the obfequious element
We fmote, and colourlefs pellucid changed
To fanguine and opaque; and when he called
Embodied reptile hofts o'er houfe and field,

We

We too with facil imitation raised

Th' amphibious croaking race; but when he brought
O'er man and beaft the vermin plague, fufpenfe
Our myftery failed; for to tranfmute the duft
Of Egypt, and with swarms of infects loathed,
Priefts, altars, temples, palaces defile,

Ifis forbade, and, blafting our attempt,

:

Her dreadful frown affumed, and name of wrath,
Tithrambo her difhonour'd priefts fhe mourns,
And rites polluted, (hence her aid withdrawn):
Or Typhon's baleful influence triumphs now
Predominant in air; or Ifrael's God,

In higher fpheres prefiding, thwarts our charms.

Book I. 1. 104. In the next plague our author makes a still more alarming deviation from his text. Instead of the simple plague of flies, he gives us, in a most heterodox manner, a plague of all animals whatsoever, and tells us that this is the true meaning of the passage in scripture, without adducing a tittle of evidence for the assertion. Now, we strongly suspect, that instead of pitying the Egyptians for such a plague, our true English sportsmen, many of whom belong to his own mother church, and will naturally look into a brother clergyman's performance, will rather envy the Egyptians such a visitation of elephants and bisons, wild boars, flamingoes, falcons, &c.; and, in spite of the snakes and amphisbænas, wish in their hearts for a few shots at such excellent game, so infinitely preferable to fly-catching. What would a Daniel or a Thornton say, to have the whole treasures of savage nature laid open to their field sports?

The passage we allude to is quite a natural history poetized, Foremost in whirls the infect millions came.'

These are not so pleasant, to be sure; but let us come to the wildfowl

Of longitude immenfe, and depth profound,
Next with annoyance dire the feather'd tribe
Darken'd the fun; flamingoes, falcons, herns,
The greedy cormorant, the fharp-ey'd kite,
The doleful bittern, and the fea-mew gaunt,
Red ibis, and the hawk of fteadieft wing,
Fit fymbol of the winds, and facred held
Throughout the land of Nile; the clam'rous crane,
The broad-beak'd pelican; the oftrich tall;
The offifrage and ofprey, and the clang
Of eagles fierce, as when afar they ken
Havoc and battle; when their headlong rage
With fpeed of lightning hurries to the plain.
Nor fuch alone as whom Norwegia breeds,

Or Thule, where, from beetling precipice,
Sufpenfe, the peafant plies his dreadful trade,
Plundering their eyries; but of mighty bone,
And pennons, rival to the condor's plume,
Who in the ftony girdle pleas'd refides,
Where winter fhivers near the tropic fun
On Cotopafi, and the lonely fnows

Of Chimboraco; there the monarch wings
The depth of upper air. With eyes on fire
Darted the vulture: next the bird that tends
His aged fire (and thence by Egypt's fons
Revered) and on the royal fceptre graven
Outftretch'd his length of neck; nor lagg'd behind
The raven, nor the difmal owl, whofe cries
Infeft the night; nor he of doubtful form,
Th' unhallow'd bird of darkness, though to beafts
Fitlier perhaps afcribed, and by his fide

The vampyre, kindred plague, that fucks the veins,
And changes fleep to death.

We have then a procession of snakes with long names; and afterwards this fine menagerie of quadrupeds.

Now far and wide

The dufty plain refounds with trampling speed
Of beftial feet; now leaps, now proudly ftalks
The panther, confcious of his painted veft,
And youthful strength redundant; now remote,
And now at hand, the lion's hollow roar
Appals the bold; flow from the-labouring wave
Behemoth fnorting rofe, portentous fhape,
His loins and ribs like folid plates of brass,
His tail like cedar waving, and his bones
As iron bars; the horned rhinoceros,
The boar and spotted ounce; the bearded pard,
The fierce-ey'd bifon, furious buffalo,
The fharp-quill'd porcupine, and tiger fell,
Promiscuous roam'd; the wild afs did not love
That time his defart haunts and mountains drear,
But fwept the plain with favage fcorn, deriding
Affrighted man; unwieldy in his might
Huge ftrode the lordly elephant, and feem'd
A moving tower, o'er all the countless throng
Preeminent, as o'er the tallest bark

Some icy mount in Hyperborean feas

Loofe drifting from the pole, beneath whose lee

Navies might moor-fo vaft the giant length,

The base fo deep, the nodding creft so high. '—Book I. 1. 393.

An epic poem, we are told by the critic, is to be considered

under

under three heads, the subject, the characters, and the narration of the poet.

The subject ought to have unity, greatness and interest ;—in two of these respects, Mr Hoyle is remarkably classical. As the hero of epic song is in the hands of the poet not a drudge of all work, who is to shift from one unconnected adventure to another, but an articled apprentice, who is to be kept strictly to one business, with the exception of a few episodes intervening like holidays; so the hero of the Exodiade attends, during ten thousand lines, very soberly to the main chance. Delays are indeed interposed, such as the marriage of Moses, the parliamentary intrigues of the devils, the country dances of the witches and clergy of Egypt, and the provoking obstinacy of Pharaoh; but our unpleasant suspense is relieved by the certainty of what is ultimately to be done with Pharaoh, and the consciousness how well he deserves it. Indeed, the moral of our poet's work seems only an echo of the concluding stanza of another heroic poem on the same subject, by an author of no small celebrity in his dayNow, was not Pharaoh a very great rascal,

Not to let the children of Ifrael, with their wives and their fons and daughters, go out into the widernefs to eat the Lord's pascal ? › * Nor is the gentle relief of the episode wanting to this work; at least, we apprehend the interview of Moses with her serene highness the Egyptian princess-dowager Thermutis (in the sixth book), having little or nothing to do with the main subject, to be an episodical flourish. The evening party of those illustrious personages reminds us strongly of that of Dido and Æneas, as far as story-telling goes:—but here the similarity stops; for the moral tendency of the two passages is as different as that of the Shorter Catechism and the Nouvelle Eloise. Instead of a lovesick queen, we have an aged and devout gentlewoman considerably turned of ninety. None of the madness, suicide, or romance of Dido, which so much endanger the morality of youth in perusing the Roman poet, are to be found in this holy episode. -Thermutis is, indeed, the adopted mother of Moses; but if she were not, the greatest praise would still be due to our poet, for painting them in such grave and reflective attitudes, that the loosest imagination could conceive no more danger to their mutual virtue from the tête-à-tête, than from the meeting of two Egyptian mummies.

Under the head of characters, much has been said by criti

This admirable diítich is extracted from a metrical verfion of a confiderable part of the Holy Scriptures by Zachary Boyd-a copy of whica is prefeived in the library of the university of Glafgow.