fect description of its contents; we will confine ourselves to a very few words of comment.

Mr. Macpherson assures us, in his preface, that his opinions on the subject before us have been the result of a long and patient investigation; and the historical part of the volume bears ample testimony to the truth of this assurance; but though we fully acquit him of any intentional deviation from the strictest impartiality, and are ready to admit every fact on which his conclusions are grounded, we must confess that he has not ultimately conveyed to our minds the conviction which is impressed upon his own. If, as he contends, the nature of our intercourse with India be such, that when left to itself, the whole trade cannot fail to devolve into the hands of the company; the legitimate inference seems to be, that the exclusive privilege which confirms this monopoly is unnecessary. Inasmuch as such a privilege tends to degrade the whole mercantile body of the nation, whom it disqualifies from investing their capi tals in one of the gr at branches of the national commerce; as it has notoriously exposed the company to the incessant jealousy of their fellow subjects, and in former times, to the frequent persecution of government;-and as though actually limited by conditions which render it apparently nugatory, it continues to force on the legislature the periodical examination of our commercial interests in the East, it is surely open to many objections; and we must confess our inability to discover the advantages by which these objections are counterbalanced. We are therefore compelled, even on Mr. Macpherson's premises, to acquiesce in Dr. Smith's conclusion against the continuance of the monopoly, though we cannot in conscience approve that sweeping spoliation of the Company's foreign possessions which he has so hastily, and, as we think, so inconsistently recommended.

It is indeed singular enough that this able champion of commercial liberty, after proving that all interference of government in matters of trade, is not only useless but pernicious, should solicit such interference for the purpose of obtaining a very dubious advantage, through the violation of the plainest principles of justice. That a large proportion of India is the undoubted property of the crown, that is to say of the state and people of Great Britain,' is certainly true, because those possessions are the property of Bri tish subjects; but it is equally true that the estate of every indivi dual in the empire is in the same predicament; and we know not why this claim on the part of the public is brought forward, since it is at the same time admitted that the Company's estates cannot justly be confiscated, but ought to be purchased by an adequate remuneration. If, however, the proposed measure were not clogged with a condition which renders it, as we conceive, utterly impracticable,

cable, we should still hesitate to recommend it; not only because it is obviously unnecessary for the establishment of that freedom of commerce which would be at once restored by the mere cessation of the restrictions now imposed upon it;-nor solely because we think, with Mr. Macpherson, that no prospect of purely commercial benefit, would justify the risk to which our civil liberties would be exposed by such an innovation;-but farther because we entertain serious doubts whether those very sources of profit, which it was Dr. Smith's particular object to secure, would not be endangered by such a change. It is notorious that, whilst the Company have acquired, and preserved for the public, an extensive empire in the east, the legislature of Great Britain have thrown away an equally extensive empire in the west; and as the sagacious writer on the Wealth of Nations' has, in his investigation of the principles of our colonial policy, very fully explained the causes of the latter event, we find ourselves compelled to dissent from his opinion in a single instance, where it seems to be at variance with his general reasoning.

ART. VIII.

Poetical Vaguries. By George Colman, the Younger. 4to. London. Printed for the Author. 1812.

THERE may be persons so little read in the nuga canora

and farce-comedies of modern times, as to open this volume without any previous acquaintance with Mr. Colman, the Younger. Very young, indeed, will such readers judge Mr. Colman to be; and scarcely pardonable, even to the most extreme youth, will they pronounce his vagaries:' but to those who know that Mr. Colman is not a giddy boy just escaped from school, and setting up for a poet and wit, on a small stock of facility and fancy, and a large one of puns, old jokes, and double entendres, to those, we say, this volume will afford any thing but amusement, and will appear any thing but excusable.

We are not, at best, great admirers of parody, burlesque, and such small wit. It is only tolerable when it is confined within very narrow limits, and adapted to light and momentary occasions; but, really, when trifling begins to grow ponderous, and swell into quartos, it is high time to relieve the slender stalk of light reading from the worthless pumpkin that threatens to overload it.

What has induced Mr. Colman to venture on the publication of such a volume as this, we are at a loss to guess. Not surely the hope of fame-he has too much taste and experience to expect any such thing; nor yet the hope of profit-he cannot expect that the gentle readers, who are pleased with burlesque, will be induced to

buy

buy it either at so high a rate, or in so awful a form. Perhaps, however, the very shape and size of his work is a parody, and he means it as a ridicule on the quarto mania of the present tiers-état race of poets. If this was his intention, we can only say, that never was burlesque more complete; but, we are obliged to add, that, for a practical joke, it is rather expensive.

The volume comprizes four several pieces of wit and humour, of each of which we shall, out of respect to Mr. Colman and to shew our impartiality, take some notice, though, in justice to our readers, that notice must be very short.

The first of these facetious labours is An Ode to WE, an hackney'd Critic.' To us, this ode on hackneyed critics appears to be rather on a hackneyed subject. We hardly recollect any small rhymester who has not his ode, or remonstrance, or appeal, or intercession, addressed to the Critical, Monthly, or British reviewers, sometimes abusive, frequently vulgar, often dull, but generally intelligible. Whether Mr. Colman's ode resembles those of his predecessors in the two former qualities, its deficiency in the latter disables us from judging. The character of dulness it certainly deserves in an eminent degree, but beyond this we dare not venture an opinion: as, however, we are galled jades,' who may be supposed to wince' at this satirist's lash, we shall produce a specimen of the ode to our readers, and leave them to judge for themselves; to avoid also any suspicion of unfair dealing in a matter in which the critical character is so personally and deeply concerned, we shall, as Mr. Colman undoubtedly puts his best foot foremost, select the first two stanzas.

First person singular! pray, why
Impregnate, thus, the pronoun I?
Of madness what a tissue!
To write as if, with passion wild,

Thou oft hadst got thyself with child,

And thou wert self and issue !'-pp. 1, 2.

Mr. Colman has not taken to himself any merit for the more than Pindaric obscurity which pervades this ode; but we, in our

VOL. VIII. NO. XV.

K

candour,

'

candour, must confess that, to us, it has more of that source of the sublime than any poem, ancient or modern, except the Cassandra of Lycophron, and the Portugal' of a noble contemporary noticed in a former number. In one stanza, however, there is a glimmering of light, and that glimmering seriously alarms us.

'Be what thou wilt, when all is done,
To me thou'rt (like thyself) all one;
Thou'rt welcome still to flog on,
For till one addled egg's a brood,
Or twenty Wes a multitude,

My muse and I will jog on.'

This, if we quite comprehend it, intimates that Mr. Colman intends to write to all eternity; a determination which would give us great pain if it imposed a corresponding obligation upon us to remain alive for the purpose of reading or reviewing these eternal (we do not say immortal) writings.

The second effort of the eternal muse is entituled Low Ambition,' and we began it with some hopes that the low ambition of being a poetical jack-pudding would have been held up to the just ridicule of Mr. Colman's readers. This object is, indeed, indirectly pursued, inasmuch as the verses are just such as we should quote, for the purpose of deterring a young writer from this sort of humble authorship; but the professed object is to give a life of a certain Mr. Daw, whose trade was, we know not what, a candlesnuffer or scene-shifter at some theatre, and who is elegantly described by Mr. Colman as

'Brisk as a flea, and ignorant as dirt.'

The history of this worthy is not, it may be well supposed, very interesting as a piece of biography; and we need only say of it, that the language in which it is written, is admirably suited to the subject, and that the main incident of the story is stolen from a French jest-book, and is not worth stealing.

The third, the longest, and, we doubt not, in Mr. Colman's opinion, the most valuable, of this quaternion, is called The Lady of the Wreck, or the Castle of Blarneygig.' This, as its name, a dedication to Walter Scott, and sundry sly notes give us to understand, is a parody on the Lady of the Lake. Now, as parodies are, of all efforts after wit, perhaps the most easy, we anticipated some degree, at least, of amusement, from such a notorious wag as Mr. Colman; but we were most cruelly disappointed. Mr. Čolman, besides a careful omission of wit or humour, has also committed the egregious blunder (by-the-bye his subject is Irish) of making the story of his parody grave and tragical, while that of the prototype is gay and elegant. A parody consists, generally, in the application

application of high-sounding poetry to familiar objects, but the kind of parody which degrades or destroys its own subject is new to us; and is as if the Clown in a pantomime, in parodying one of Harlequin's agile jumps, should pleasantly break his own neck upon the spot. Perhaps we may be told that our author meant not to parody but to travestie the Lady of the Lake, and that travesty consists in degrading a subject by the vulgar manner in which it is treated. But we reply, that this is not, as we collect from his advertisement, Mr. Colman's intention, and that, if it were, he has not accomplished it; for he has not ridiculed Mr. Scott's subject. The City Shower is a parody, and the famous work of Scarron is a travesty. In the first, the pomp of language is imitated, and applied to a common subject; in the latter, the subject is still noble, but the language is mean. In short, the best account that we can give of Mr. Colman's strange production is, that he has travestied his own story, and made a burlesque upon himself. But whom or what he has burlesqued, if he amused us, we should not very much care. Mr. Scott's reputation is increased rather than diminished by the involuntary applause of imitators and parodists, and we dare say that he has no kind of objection that his works should afford the public double amusement, first in the original, and afterwards in the copy. He needs be satisfied to be travestied and burlesqued, as Virgil and even Homer have been before him.

Οὐκ ἀδαὴς ἔγραψε Κίμων ταδε, παιδὶ δ' ἐπ ̓ ἔργῳ

ΜῶμΘ», ὃν ἐκ ἥρως Δαίδαλο ἐξέφυγεν.

Our lamentation on this occasion is, that we are any thing but amused, and we much doubt that our readers will be better pleased than ourselves with the following specimens, which we have chosen from what the author himself appears to consider as the most prominent parts of his POEM, as he, in serious prose, is modestly pleased to call such trash as this.

Harp of the Pats! that rotting long hast lain

On the soft bosom of St. Allen's bog,

And, when the wind had fits, wouldst twang a strain,
Till envious mud did all thy musick clog,

E'en just as too much pudding chokes a dog;

Oh! Paddy's harp! still sleeps thine accent's pride?

Will nobody be giving it a jog?

Still must thou silent be, as when espied

Upon an Irish, old, old halfpenny's back side ?'--pp. 40, 41.

O! Thady Rann! the Isle of Man'

'I left, and sail'd for you;'