Forth rush the breathless women; and behind
With curses comes the fiend in desperate mind.
In vain the sabres soon cut short the strife,
And chop the shrieking wretch, and drink his bloody life.
"Now light the light," the Sultan cried aloud.
"Twas done; he took it in his hand, and bowed
Over the corpse, and looked upon the face;
Then turned and knelt beside it in the place,
And said a prayer, and from his lips there crept
Some gentle words of pleasure, and he wept.

In reverent silence the spectators wait,
Then bring him at his call both wine and meat;
And, when he had refreshed his noble heart,
He bade his host be blest, and rose up to depart.

The man amazed, all mildness now, and tears,
Fell at the Sultan's feet, with many prayers,
And begged him to vouchsafe to tell his slave
The reason, first, of that command he gave
About the light; then, when he saw the face,
Why he knelt down; and lastly, how it was
That fare so poor as his detained him in the place.
The Sultan said, with much humanity,
"Since first I saw thee come, and heard thy cry,
I could not rid me of a dread, that one
By whom such daring villanies were done
Must be some lord of mine, perhaps a lawless son.
Whoe'er he was, I knew my task, but feared
A father's heart, in case the worst appeared;
For this I had the light put out; but when
I saw the face, and found a stranger slain,
I knelt, and thanked the sovereign arbiter,

Whose work I had performed through pain and fear;
And then I rose, and was refreshed with food,

The first time since thou cam'st, and marr'dst my solitude."

But the following, only recently published, is more in this poet's usual manner, and attests, we think, as powerfully as anything he has ever produced, the master's triumphant hand, in a style which he has made his own,

and in which, with however many imitators, he has no rival:

THE FANCY CONCERT.

They talked of their concerts, their singers, and scores,
And pitied the fever that kept me in doors;
And I smiled in my thought, and said,

fancies,

"O ye sweet

And animal spirits, that still in your dances
Come bringing me visions to comfort my care,
Now fetch me a concert,-imparadise air.”

Then a wind, like a storm out of Eden, came pouring
Fierce into my room, and made tremble the flooring,
And filled, with a sudden impetuous trample
Of heaven, its corners; and swelled it to ample
Dimensions to breathe in, and space for all power;
Which falling as suddenly, lo! the sweet flower
Of an exquisite fairy-voice opened its blessing;
And ever and aye, to its constant addressing,
There came, falling in with it, each in the last,
Flageolets one by one, and flutes blowing more fast,
And hautboys and clarinets, acrid of reed,
And the violin, smoothlier sustaining the speed
As the rich tempest gathered, and buz-ringing moons
Of tambours, and huge basses, and giant bassoons;
And the golden trombone, that darteth its tongue
Like a bee of the gods; nor was absent the gong,
Like a sudden fate-bringing oracular sound
Of earth's iron genius, burst up from the ground,
A terrible slave come to wait on his masters
The gods, with exultings that clanged like disasters;
And then spoke the organs, the very gods they,
Like thunders that roll on a wind-blowing day;
And, taking the rule of the roar in their hands,
Lo! the Genii of Music came out of all lands;
And one of them said, "Will my lord tell his slave
What concert 'twould please his Firesideship to have ?”

Then I said in a tone of immense will and pleasure,
"Let orchestras rise to some exquisite measure;
And let there be lights and be odours; and let
The lovers of music serenely be set;

And then, with their singers in lily-white stoles,
And themselves clad in rose-colour, fetch me the souls
Of all the composers accounted divinest,

And, with their own hands, let them play me their finest."

Then, lo! was performed my immense will and pleasure,
And orchestras rose to an exquisite measure;
And lights were about me and odours; and set
Were the lovers of music, all wondrously met;
And then, with their singers in lily-white stoles,

And themselves clad in rose-colour, in came the souls
Of all the composers accounted divinest,

And, with their own hands, did they play me their finest.

Oh! truly was Italy heard then, and Germany,
Melody's heart, and the rich brain of harmony;
Pure Paisiello, whose airs are as new,

Though we know them by heart, as May-blossoms and dew;

And nature's twin son, Pergolesi; and Bach,

Old father of fugues, with his endless fine talk;

And Gluck, who saw gods; and the learned sweet feeling
Of Haydn; and Winter, whose sorrows are healing;
And gentlest Corelli, whose bowing seems made
For a hand with a jewel; and Handel, arrayed
In Olympian thunders, vast lord of the spheres,
Yet pious himself, with his blindness in tears,
A lover withal, and a conqueror, whose marches
Bring demi-gods under victorious arches;

Then Arne, sweet and tricksome; and masterly Purcell,
Lay-clerical soul; and Mozart universal,

But chiefly with exquisite gallantries found,
With a grove in the distance of holier sound;
Nor forgot was thy dulcitude, loving Sacchini ;
Nor love, young and dying, in shape of Bellini;
Nor Weber, nor Himmel, nor Mirth's sweetest name,
Cimarosa; much less the great organ-voiced fame
Of Marcello, that hushed the Venetian sea;
And strange was the shout, when it wept, hearing thee,
Thou soul full of grace as of grief, my heart-cloven,
My poor, my most rich, my all-feeling Beethoven,
O'er all, like a passion, great Pasta was heard,
As high as her heart, that truth-uttering bird;

And Banti was there; and Grassini, that goddess!
Dark, deep-toned, large, lovely, with glorious boddice;
And Mara; and Malibran, stung to the tips

Of her fingers with pleasure; and rich Fodor's lips
And, manly in face as in tone, Angrisani;

And Naldi, thy whim; and thy grace, Tramezzani ;
And was it a voice?-or what was it ?-say-
That, like a fallen angel beginning to pray,
Was the soul of all tears and celestial despair!
Paganini it was, 'twixt his dark-flowing hair.

So now we had instrument, now we had song-
Now chorus, a thousand-voiced one-hearted throng;
Now pauses that pampered resumption, and now
But who shall describe what was played us, or how?
'Twas wonder, 'twas transport, humility, pride;
"Twas the heart of the mistress that sat by one's side;
'Twas the graces invisible, moulding the air
Into all that is shapely, and lovely, and fair,
And running our fancies their tenderest rounds

Of endearments and luxuries, turned into sounds;
'Twas argument even, the logic of tones;

"Twas memory, 'twas wishes, 'twas laughters, 'twas moans; 'Twas pity and love, in pure impulse obeyed;

'Twas the breath of the stuff of which passion is made.

And these are the concerts I have at my will;

Then dismiss them, and patiently think of your "bill."(Aside) Yet Lablache, after all, makes me long to go, still.

OTHER POETICAL WRITERS.

But we can indulge in no more extracts or detailed criticism. The names we have mentioned are the chief belonging to the period included within our review, which must be understood as coming down only to about the close of the reign of George the Third. Many others, however, also brighten this age of our poetical literature, which must here be dismissed with a mere enumeration :-Rogers, Bowles, Charles Lamb, Professor

Wilson, the Ettrick Shepherd (Hogg), Allan Cunningham, Tennant (the author of 'Anster Fair'), Hector M'Niel, Tannahill, Grahame (the author of The Sabbath'), Leyden, Thomas Pringle, M. G. Lewis, Robert Bloomfield, Henry Kirke White, James Montgomery, John Clare, Lord Thurlow, Lord Strangford, Sir Egerton Brydges, Shee, Frere, Savage Landor, Maturin, Procter (Barry Cornwall), James and Horace Smith (authors of the 'Rejected Addresses '), Milman, Heber, Herbert, Wolfe (author of the lines on the burial of Sir John Moore), Miss Baillie, Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Tighe, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Hemans, &c. Some of these, indeed, may merit no higher designation than that of agreeable or elegant versifiers; but others, both among those that have passed away and those that are still among us, will live in the language as true poets, and will be allowed to have received no stinted measure of the divine gift of song.

On the whole this space of about half a century, dating from the first appearance of Cowper and Burns, must be regarded as the most remarkable period in the history of our poetical literature after the age of Spenser and Shakspeare. And if, in comparing the produce of the two great revivals, the one happening at the transition from the sixteenth century into the seventeenth, the other at that from the eighteenth into the nineteenth, we find something of greater freshness, freedom, raciness, and true vigour, warmth, and nature, in our earlier than in our modern poetry, it is not to be denied on the other hand that in some respects the latter may claim a preference over the former. It is much less debased by