Presbyterian Church. Generally, indeed, the Calvinism of our author is clothed with flesh and sinews, and steps forth in fair and comely proportion; though on one or two occasions, there may appear more than some readers will relish of the anatomy of the Calvinistic scheme. This, however, we will say, that we most sincerely pity the fastidiousness of that man's mind, who could turn from this volume, so eminently calculated to excite Christian seriousness, with any sentiment allied to disgust and disregard. It is scarcely possible to dip into any part of it, without finding the author, when in the midst of life, such as we should desire to be at the hour of death.

But there is one point which, beyond all others, we are desirous to press upon the observation of our readers we mean, the use which is made, in this work, of the promises of the Gospel and the doctrines of grace. Mr. Meikle did not venture to contemplate the approach of the king of terrors, without the cross of Christ being in sight, on which he who had the power of death was destroyed. He viewed death with composure, because he was one who could humbly say "Merita mea miserationes Domini."

Having said this generally, we cannot conclude without inviting the bigotted churchman, in particular, to peruse carefully the life of this good Presbyterian, and recommending it to him, instead of declaring all the ordinances of the church of which Mr. Meikle was a member to be inefficacious, to mark rather, for his own imitation, their manifest efficacy in the conduct of this excellent man. We would advise him, instead of consigning over such men as Mr. Meikle to uncovenanted mercy, to see whether he himself really trusts in that merciful covenant of grace, in which Mr. Meikle evidently reposed all his confidence.

We would likewise invite those who have adopted violent and indiscriminate prejudices against all

Calvinists, as being careless and presumptuous, &c. &c. to behold in Mr. Meikle an union of vigilance with composure, and to take notice that he considered the church not only as a feast to which he was freely called, but as a vineyard also, in which he was bound to work.

From the worldly-minded man, who considers gloom and religion to be convertible terms, we have one request to make-that he will at least observe a simple fact stated in the preface (if he will not proceed beyond the preface) that few Christians were of a more uniformly cheerful and lively turn of mind than Mr. Meikle, and yet he passed much of his time in meditation on mortality and immortality.

The Borough; a Poem, in Twentyfour Letters. By the Rev. Ğ. CRABBE, LL. B. London: Hatchard. 1810. 8vo. pp. 344.

MR. CRABBE has long been known to the world as a writer of much originality and considerable merit; the successful cultivator of a field of poetry peculiar to himself. Twenty-seven years have elapsed since the appearance of his first productions, consisting of three short pieces, entitled, The Library, The Village, and The Newspaper.

These seem to have been very well received; and "The Village' bad merit enough to earn a letter of approbation from Dr. Johnson. The author, reasonably elated by such a testimonial, has inserted it in the preface to the second edition of his works; and the letter, though short and of no intrinsic importance, has yet something sufficiently characteristic of the writer to interest the lovers of Johnsonian scraps. We shall, therefore, copy it for their gratification. Mr. Crabbe, while the work was yet in manuscript, had laid it before the Doctor for revision. Johnson's imprimatur is as follows:

"Sir,

"I have sent you back Mr. Crabbe's poem, which I read with great delight; it is original, vigo rous, and elegant. The alterations which I have made, I do not require him to adopt; for my lines are, perhaps, not often better than his own but he may take mine and his own together, and perhaps, between them, produce something better than either. He is not to think his copy wantonly defaced: a wet sponge will wash all the red lines away, and leave the pages clean. His dedication will be least liked it were better to contract it into a short sprightly address. I do not doubt of Mr. Crabbe's success. " I am, Sir,

"Your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON."

The approbation bestowed on Mr. Crabbe's first performances, seem either to have satiated his ambition or to have disappointed his hopes; for he did not favour the public with any new exertion of his powers till after an unaccountable lapse of twentyfive years. Whatever was the cause of this delay, its effect was certainly that of amelioration. (In a second edition of his works, published in 1808, appeared, for the first time, "The Parish Register;" a poem, in our opinion, decidedly superior to any that he has produced.) There were also added to the collection several smaller pieces, of consider able merit. His last publication is that which forms the subject of the present review.

Mr. Crabbe must certainly be classed among the rural and domestic poets; but, from all others of this class he differs so widely, that his poetry must be considered as forming a distinct genus in the analysis of poetry.) No topics, perhaps, have more frequently furnished materials to the poet than the manners, habits, and sentiments of the vulgar; but it has been always hitherto thought necessary to exhibit them in some disguise, and to suffer

them to borrow from fiction the de licacy and amiableness which nature had denied them. Turning from the corruption of towns and villages, the rural poets have generally repaired to the solitary cottage, or the hermit's cell, and the peace and innocence, which even there they failed to find, they have been accustomed to supply by their imagination. Far removed from this delicacy, Mr. Crabbe enters into a resolute detail of poverty, profligacy and disease; is more conversant with workhouses, than with grottos; and, instead of the sentimental distresses of Floras, Delias, and Strephons, enumerates the substantial grievances of Bridget Dawdle, Richard Monday, or Peter Grimes. He loves to exhibit his personages just as he finds them, in all their native coarseness and depravity, or in all their simple and unvarnished merit. They owe to his muse no favour, but that of drawing them from obscurity.

If such descriptions as those of Mr. Crabbe related to more polished scenes, and to persons of higher rank, they would properly be called satires. He has, therefore, been judiciously characterized as "The satirist of low life' It is to the delineation of character and manners that he chiefly applies himself; and his delineation, if just, is at least severe. Though not unwilling to praise, and well able to give to the charms of humble virtue their true energy and grace, it is by no means with an indulgent eye that he contemplates the scenes before him. (He seems to be more on the watch for matter of censure than of panegyric, and paints the depravity which he finds in colours so vivid, that he has been thought to sacrifice resemblance to effect.) Of this, however, we acquit him. Life supplies but too copious materials to the pen of the satirist, be his thirst for censure what it may. No doubt such characters as his Blaneys and his Grimeses may be found; but we believe the poet Edinburgh Review of Crabbe's Bo

rough.

has gone somewhat out of his way to find them, and that they are of the very worst kinds which he could have selected.

If considered as a descriptive poet, Mr. Crabbe has also strong peculiarities. The pencil with which be delineates nature is obviously the same that he employs upon cha racter. Little solicitous about the intrinsic beauty of his subject, his great aim seems to be to represent with fidelity and force; and he is anxious to leave nothing unrepresented which can add to the completeness of his picture, without considering whether it adds or not to its attraction.

The characteristics above pointed out are to be found in all the poems of this author; in none so strongly marked, perhaps, as in that which he last published.

The first of the twenty-four Letters of which this poem is composed, exhibits powers of description well calculated to raise the most advantageous prejudices in favour of the rest of the work. The busy and variegated prospect presented by a sea-town and its environs is sketched with great spirit and effect. The river, the quay, the limekilns, the walks, and the tea gardens, and, lastly, the ocean itself, in the terrors of its turbulence and in the majesty of its repose, are brought to the eye with a minuteness and accuracy which seems almost to blend the province of the painter with that of the poet. Those, to whom a sea prospect is at all familiar, cannot fail immediately to feel the truth of the following delineation.

Be it the summer noon: a sandy space The ebbing tide has left upon the place. Then, just the hot and stony beech above, Light twinkling streams in bright confusion

move,

(For heated thus the warmer air ascends,
And with the cooler in its fall contends),
Then the broad bosom of the ocean keeps
An equal motion; swelling as it sleeps;
Then, slowly sinking, curbing to the strand,
Faint lazy waves o'ercreep the ridgy sand,
Or tap the tarry boat with gentle blow,
And back return in silence, smooth and slow.

sink down."

The quiet surface of the ocean shake; As an awakened giant, with a frown, Might show his wrath, and then to sleep pp. 9, 10. To the concluding simile, though it has a certain air of boldness and force, we must object, as too recherché, and little calculated, besides, to aid the imagination of the reader. To illustrate the agitation of the ocean by the wrath of a giant, is to explain what is familiar to every body by that which nobody knows any thing about.

In the next letter, we have the tale of Thomas and Sally-than which we will venture to pronounce there is no piece in the whole range of English poetry possessing superior power of genuine pathos of that true pathetic, which flows from the purest and most elevated sources, undebased by any admixture of false sentiment or unchristian passion.

This touching story is so well known, that it is unnecessary to extract it for the reader's perusal. Yet we must be allowed to record a part of it, both for the benefit of those of our readers, probably few in number,, who may not have access to the work itself, and in order to recal it to the recollection of those, if such there are, who suppose that there is any finer or more attractive vein of poetry than that which is opened by religion.

"Still long she nursed him; tender thoughts, mean time,

Were interchanged, and hopes and views sublime.

To her he came to die-and every day, She took a portion of the dread away; With him she prayed, to him his Bible read, Sooth'd the faint heart, and held the aching

Then, as if breaking from a cloud, she gave Fresh light, and gilt the prospect of the grave." pp. 25, 26.

We cannot resist the temptation to add the succeeding passage.

The old and serious of his habits spoke, The frank and youthful loved his pleasant joke;

And Miss a friend to back a small request. Mamma approved a safe contented guest, In him, his flock found nothing to condemn,

No trifles fail'd his yielding mind to please,

And fondly whisper'd, Thou must go to rest;'

I go,' he said; but, as he spoke, she found His hand more cold, and fluttering was the sound;

Then gazed affrighten'd; but she caught a last,

A dying look of love-and all was past!" p. 26.

suc

After thus exhibiting his powers in the descriptive and the pathetic, Mr. Crabbe introduces us, in the ceeding Letter, to a very different style of composition: and gives a specimen of his talents for light and playful satire.

In the vicar of the parish, we are presented with a clerical trifler of a very entertaining cast; not of that ordinary class of foppish divines, who differ from other fops only in a slight distinction of dress-but a kind of Will Wimble, in orders.

Fiddling and fishing were his arts-at times

He alter'd sermons, and he aim'd at rhymes. And bis fair friends, not yet intent on cards, Oft he amused with riddles and charades.

The rich approved; of them in awe he stood; The poor admired- they all believed him good,

Nor one so old has left this world of sin, More like the being that he enter'd in." pp. 35, 36:

Though our gravity is not quite proof against this recital of the vicar's qualities, and though we are very sorry to be obliged to find fault with an obliging, inoffensive, inconsequential being, whom every body else seems to have liked, it is nevertheless clear that this character cannot be allowed to pass without serious comment in the Christian Observer. As assigned to a clergyman, its triviality is too revolting to be comic; and we own that the spirit of levity in which the reverend author has pourtrayed it, which he treats it, led us to look and the smiling indulgence with forward with some anxiety to his letter on religious sects.

We hate illiberality, and are not so-narrow as to maintain, that every thing in which religion is concernair and a grave countenance; but ed must be discussed with a solemn when a Christian and a clergyman has occasion to describe a gross neglect of every Christian duty, an utter disregard of the clerical functions, an insensibility even to clerical decorum, and the death of an unregenerate sinner, we at least expect him to mingle with his satire some gravity of censure, and some fervour of compassion.

We do not profess to give a full account of all that is to be found in this work. It has been so long before the public, that our object is less to inform the reader of its Contents, than to guide his judgment upon its merits. For this purpose, it is sufficient to advert to some of its most remarkable passages. Of the description of the curate, therefore

which occupies the remainder of this letter, we shall only observe, that his character is intended as a contrast to that of his superior, and that, though it is executed with considerable skill, it contains nothing that tends to counteract the impressions which the style of the preceding description is calculated to convey.

In the Letter on Religious Sects, we shall first notice a passage, in p. 52, in which the eternity of future punishment is considered as a doctrine but doubtfully inculcated in the Scriptures.) We hope, and are inclined to believe, that the author did not mean to be so understood.

His words are certainly to that purport; and it is, at all events, unfortunate, that in an attack upon sectarians, he should himself appear to exhibit an instance of heterodoxy from which few sectarians would not recoil. We have a further charge, however, to make against

pro

this letter, and it is one that relates to its general spirit and tenor. It is no less than this:(that the author has been witty at the expense of truth, and that, while fessing to narrate facts, his muse has not scrupled to indulge herself in all the licence of fiction. We think it prudent, here, to insert this caveat, that by truth and fiction we do not mean veracity and falsehood.) We do not say, that Mr. Crabbe has wilfully misrepresented;

we simply say, that his representations are calculated to give impressions not warranted by fact. It is, in truth, the old error into which, somehow or other, those who attack religious sects are always falling; the error of investing fools, knaves, and madmen, with the name of Methodist, and then assailing Methodism itself with all the abuse which these fools, knaves, and madmen, so richly deIn this letter, we have two sermons; one intended as a specimen of the Calvinistic style of preaching, the other of the Arminian; of these facetious discourses, the following is a fair sample.

serve.

(The Calvinist is supposed to speak-)

"Why are our sins forgiven? priests reply,
Because by faith in mercy we rely,
Because, believing, we repent and pray.
Is this their doctrine? Then they go astray,
We're pardon'd neither for belief nor deed;
For faith, nor practice-principle, nor creed;
Nor for our sorrow for our former sin,
Nor for our fears when better thoughts begin;
Nor prayers nor penance in the cause avail,
All strong remorse, all soft contrition fail.
It is the call! till that proclaims us free,
In darkness, doubt, and bondage we must be :

Till that assures us, we've in vain endured,
And all is over when we're once assured."

pp. 56, 57.

Now we most readily admit, that if the Calvinists in Mr. Crabbe's

Borough talk in this style, they are but we believe, that if so, they are very absurd and pernicious people; totally unlike all persons calling themselves Calvinists in every other borough of the kingdom. We do not hesitate even to pronounce our con

viction, that they absolutely stand alone in religion, and that their absurdities are not countenanced by

a coincidence of sentiment with any other persons whatever. For our own part we believe their doctrines to be the pure coinage of Mr. Crabbe's brain; and with him be all the credit of the invention.

We should be inclined to assign the same exclusive origin to the following morceau extracted from the Arminian sermon, if we did not recollect to have once seen something very like it exposed to sale, with other ribaldry, in the collection of a vender of ballads.

"Oh now again for those prevailing powers, Which once began this mighty work of ours; When the wide field, God's temple, was the

place,