ware pans, and left to dry in them, the lead does not undergo nearly so much handling as before, and the fine particies of it, which used to float in great abundance about the room, are not perceived in such dense clouds as they used to be; this dust entering the mouth was one principal cause of the diseases to which the workmen were liable. By means of your miscellany, I wish to give publicity to the above circumstance; and should any of your readers be able and willing to give ine any further particulars respecting this manufacture, which may be conducive to the health of those employed in it, they will much oblige A CONSTANT READER. For the Monthly Magazine. ON PASTORAL POETRY. "Hail, gentle Shenstone! Prince of Nambypamby! Blest be thy lark, thy linnet, and thy lamby!" TH POLWHEL. HE sort of fairy ground, over which Pastoral Poetry leads its readers, has procured this species of composition numberless admirers; and it has enjoyed the additional eclat of employing the classic pens of Theocritus, Virgil, Pope, Gesner, and Guarini, besides various of the inspired bards of the Old Testament. Yet its eternal monotony renders it disgusting to persons of judgment and correct taste. However well executed, it is only fit to be admired by children. Who can with patience bear the unmeaning and endless. repetition of faithless nymphs; dying swains; sighing breezes; purling rills; murmuring fountains; cooling grots; listening echoes; enamelled meads; tender lambkins; cooing doves; tuneful reeds; curling vines; perjured shepherds; and the sickening train of Corydons and Daphnes-Strephons and Cloes-Damons and Phillises? There may be occasionally a prettiness, which a man of understanding will be pleased with, as we would with a pretty child; or, to come nearer to the point, a pretty inanimate doll of a woman. It has, however, a fascination for young minds. I remember, when I thought Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad one of the most charming compositions in the English language ; but at that period of life I also admired the Death of Abel, and Hervey's Meditations! So absurd is the common fiction in the sentiments and situation of the characters, that Gay's Shepherds Week, where the nymphs and the swains are mere men and women, employed in common occupations of rustic life, and which was written purposely to exhibit pastorals in a ludicrous view, is, from its adherence to nature more admired by the judicious, than the fine lady and gentlemen shepherds of the great competitors Alexander Pope, and Ambrose Philips. In making these observations, I am far from condemning all pastoral poetry: Shakespeare's As you like it, his Winter's Tale, and other of his comedies, likewise Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, cannot fail to give the most exquisite pleasure to every person of taste. In these we have natural pictures of country life, interwoven with interesting story, instead of the insipid sing-song, and milk-and-water versification, by which we are surfeited even in the first pastoral writers. Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy, and the pastoral parts of Thompson's Seasons, are also entitled, and for similar reasons, to the highest praise. To illustrate the preceding observations, I shall present to the reader a view of Shenstone's celebrated ballad, which I select as being considered one of our best pastorals, one which in many passages has sterling merit, and which has even received some praise from Dr. Johnson, than whom no man ever more despised this species of writing. That I may avoid prolixity, I shall pass unnoticed such stanzas as deserve little either of praise or censure. PART I. Absence.-The poet commences with a very modest request: "Ye shepherds so cheerful and gay, Whose flocks never carelessly roam; O call the poor wanderers home!" Those Shepherds, whose flocks never carelessly roam must enjoy a snug sinecure, and might certainly have plenty of time on their hands; but they would hardly like to have their quiet disturbed, to run after the erratic charge of their love-sick neighbour. Vulgar sheep are obliged to be driven home; but this poetical flock, it appears, will come at a call, like so many dogs! "Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find, I have left my dear Phillis behind.” The swain appears here rather sulky: the two first of the above lines seems to imply" None of your palaver! leave me me to my own whims, and go look after my sheep." The I at the end of the third line, followed by the I at the beginning of the fourth, is a pretty concetto! "Now I know what it is to have strove With the torture of doubt and desire,; What it is to admire and to love, And to leave her we love and admire." To have strove is not grammar. The changes (to use a vulgar expression) are most delectably rung on love and admire. "Ah! lead forth my flock in the morn, And the damps of each ev'ning repel. Alas! I am faint and forlorn; I have bade my dear Phillis farewell." Here again our inamorato gives the shepherds fresh orders. His flock is now neither to be called nor driven, but to be led. What he means by telling them to repel the damps of each evening is utterly beyond my comprehension. If it allude to the sheep, I should think the covering given them by nature sufficient for this purpose; but probably these Arcadian sheep are more delicate in constitution than common muttons with which I have been acquainted. "I have bade" may be poetry, but it is not grammar-bid might have been admissible, as an abreviation of bidden, without derogation to the measure. "Since Phillis vouchsaf'd me a look, I never once dreamt of my vine; May I lose both my pipe and my crook, If I know of a kid that was mine !" The first line of the above stanza seems to have been borrowed from Capt. Bobadil-" Vouchsafe me a light of this match, Master Kitely's man.' "I never once dreamt" would in humble prose be the extreme of vulgarity; in pastoral verse it is perhaps a beauty. "May I lose both my pipe and my crook!" What a pretty, little, innocent, pastoral oath! especially as the crook would be of no use, when he was determined no longer to take charge of his flock; and if, as is classically expressed in the last line, he did not know of a kid "that was mine," what had he to care about them. Mine appears to have been found a necessary rhyme to vine: and, on the other hand, although it is probable he had more vines than one, the singular has been used instead of the plurai, to furnish a counter-rhyme to mine. It is not a little remarkable, that the preceding stanzas are all exceptionable, and that the remaining ones of Part I. are not only the reverse, but some of then eminently beautiful. PART II.-Hope. "My banks they are furnished with bees, And my hills are white over with.. From the furnishing in the first line, it looks as if it had been written by an upholsterer, especially from the interpolation of the unnecessary and ungrammatical they, to fill up the measure. "Whose nurmur invites one to sleep." I never could abide that one. It seems to have been introduced by ignorant or indolent translators, to Anglicise the French on; and now it has become almost an English idiom; but it will not be found used by any correct writer. The newspaper translators have been the means of giving currency to many false expressions in our language. Their hurry may furnish an excuse, but it is of fatal consequence, as the works of newspaper writers are read so universally, and by so many ignorant persons. Thus, our naval officers have universally adopted the verb to capture, which never was a verb till made such by these editors. In like manner, when the French papers speak of une corvette, which is neither more nor less than a sloop of war, our editors, and after them our captains, never capture" from France a sloop of war; it is always a corvette. But I di gress "Not a pine in my grove is there seen, But with tendrils of woodbine is bound; Not a beech's more beautiful green, But a sweetbriar entwines it around." Had this been the effusion of a cockney poet, it might have been excusable; but for Shenstone, the former of the charming Leasowes, with all its delightful walks and bowers, a first-rate critic in gardening, to forget that the sweetbriar is not a parasitical plant, was unpardonable. God knows the stanza is not so harmonious as to afford any poetical licence for this absurdity. However, the same structure must be continued in the next. "Not my fields, in the prime of the year, More charms than my cattle unfold; Not a brook that is limpid and clear, But it glitters with fishes of gold." Without cavilling at the equivocal word prime, which may either mean the first or the best of the year, I must observe, that the comparison between the charms of field and the charms of cattle have certainly the merit of novelty. As to the latter, I suppose their charms were so fascinating, that the poet (like the old woman in the adage) would kiss his COW. The third is a sad line, and that evi dently for the measure and the rhyme. Taking it as it stands, one (to adopt the author's phrase) would imagine, that in this Elysian retreat there were various sorts of brooks, some limpid and clear, others dirty and muddy; and that only in the former glitter the "fishes of gold" -not literally gold fishes, but fishes from their brilliance painted as of gold, for the sake of a rhyme to unfold, a word in itself not here the most felicitous. "One would think she might like to retire To the bow'r I have labour'd to rear; Not a shrub that I heard her admire, But I hasted and planted it there." Here we have a delectable repetition of the favourite monosyllables one, not, and but. It was very cruel in Phillis, atter her Corydon's hard labour in rearing this bower, that she would not retire to enjoy its beauties. "From the plains, from the woodlands, and And sweetly the nightingale sang from each ning of his parts, and conclude with excellence! com PART III-Solicitude.-The mencement of this part completely belies my observation on the conclusion of the last. I must have the pleasure of transcribing it: "Why will you my passion reprove? Why term it a folly to grieve? She is ev'ry way pleasing to me." Had all the ballad been written with this charming simplicity, I should have burned a gross of pens, ere I had dipped one of them in ink to attack a performance of such real merit. Some beautican fix my ideas in the mind of the reader, ful lines also follow. I do not see how I who may happen not to have Shenstone remainder. by him, but by copying the whole of the "O you that have been of her train, Come and join in my amorous lays; town Come trooping and listen the while; Nay on him let not Phyllida frown,But I cannot allow her to smile." attendant Jealousy-only the " This is a genuine picture of Love and its of the town" would better suit a Coventnymphs Garden pastoral, than that of the ena moured Corydon. "For when Paridel tries, in the dance, O how, with one trivial glance, And his crook is bestudded around, Of the magic there is in the sound!" The above picture of a beau shepherd is very happy. The break after “his pipe" is truly poetical, tree, At the foot of a rock where the river was I sat myself down on the banks of the The stanzas as to the wood pigeon's nest, as well as all that follow, have much merit. It is very odd, that our poet should be so exceptionable in the begin *John Tait, Esq. who now, as Judge of Police at Edinburgh, wields his pen, like our Poet Laureat, to send rogues and prostitutes to Bridewell. "Tis his with mock passion to glow; 'Tis his in smooth tales to unfold, How her face is as bright as the snow, And her bosom, be sure, is as cold. Repine at her triumphs, and die. 'O Phillis, 'Q Phillis,' he whispers, "more fair, "Thus glide the soft numbers along, And he fancies no shepherd his peer; Yet I never should envy the song, Were not Phillis to lend it an ear. "Let his crook be with hyacinths bound, Or sure I must envy the song." PART IV.-Disappointment.—It is to be regretted, that the poet should not have continued this ballad for a dozen of parts more. Towards the beginning it is full of imperfection, absurdity, and inelegance. As we proceed we find it improve. The long quotation I have just made of the third part has genuine merit; and with regard to the fourth part, there is not a passage, in my opi nion, with which a candid critic can find fault on the contrary, it abounds with beauties. Having thus, I trust not illiberally, criticised Mr. Shenstone, I shall conclude the present dissertation, by quoting the sentiments put in the mouth of a Chinese by a learned foreigner (I believe the Marquis D'Argens), respecting one species of pastoral. It is an extract from the Chinese Spy, a book not sufficiently known in this country; although I believe it has been translated. "There are several ways of being poetically sorrowful on such occasions (the death of distinguished characters). Now, the bard is some pensive scientific youth, who sits deploring among the tombs; again, he is Thirsis complaining amidst a circle of innocent sheep-now, Britannia sits on her own shore, and gives a loose to maternal tenderness for the loss of her darling, gallant son at another time, Parnassus, even the rugged moun tain Parnassus, gives way to grief, and is bathed in tears of distress. But the most usual and approved manner is this: Damon meets Melancas, who wears a most woeful countenance. The shepherd asks his friend, why that look of distress? Has he lost a favourite kid, or is his mistress faithless?—No, replies the other dismally, it is still worse -Pollio is no more. If that be the case, says Damon, let us retire to yonder bower, where the cypress and the jasmine give fragrance to the breeze: there let us alternately vent our sighs for Pollio, the friend of shepherds, the patron of every Muse. Ah! returns his fellow swain, let us rather repair to that grotto by the fountain's side; the murmuring stream will harmonize our lamenta tions, and philomel in the neighbouring When the scene is thus settled, they be tree will join her voice to the concert. gin-"The winds cease to breathe, and the waters to flow"-the cows forget to graze; the very tygers start from the forest with sympathetic concern!-By the tombs of our ancestors, my dear Fum, I am quite unaffected in all this distress; the whole is liquid laudanum to my spirits, and a tyger of common sensibility has twenty times more tenderness than I have.' J. BANNANTINE. Dec. 2, 1808. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, N the Number of your Magazine for December last, I see a communication from a Correspondent, signing himself" ELECTROPHILUS," -on the new Electrical Discoveries, in which I have in vain endeavoured to find that novelty of information and instruction, which, in my opinion, should be expected from every one who writes upon a subject so little investigated, and so little understood; and indeed, at last, I was unable fully to satisfy my mind what was the real meaning of the author in making such a communication. His only ostensible reasons seem to be-1st. To state to the public, that Mr. Davy did not, in his original experiments on the decomposition of the alkalis, make use of the large galvanic battery, at present in the possession of the Royal Institution. This was very well known before; because Mr. Davy had particularly mentioned, that, at the time of the discovery, the large apparatus, was not in the possession of the Institution, 2dly. To state," the general method of investigation, to which alone Mr. Davy owes this particular result." Upon this I shall not make any remark, although, perhaps, the word “ alone,' ought not to pass unnoticed, when, in the Bakerian lecture, it is written, that Mr. Davy was surprised at the result of the first experiment, in which the potash was decomposed; which he would not have been, had he at that time been guided by the "strict" and "perfectly correct" analogy, which Electrophilus would have us believe was the sole reason for Mr. Davy's making the experiments, and, consequently, that he must have expected such a result. 3dly. To give a general outline of the theory, which Mr. Davy has built upon these newly discovered electro-chemical facts. This certainly was perfectly unnecessary for the edification of the readers of the Monthly Magazine, since so clear and comprehensive an analysis of the whole has been given in your Number for February. (Vol. 25, p. 58.) These are the only reasons which appear to have induced Electrophilus to fil up your pages with his communication; and really, in my opinion, they are not of sufficient weight to warrant its insertion. I shall beg leave now to take this opportunity of making some observations upon this theory; first, however, premising, that it is far from my intention to express any dislike or ill-will_towards Mr. Davy, because from my having, as well as your Correspondent, attended his lectures, and known his abilities, I can appreciate and acknowledge his worth; but in applying the principles of his theory to some of the acknowledged chemical phenomena, I have been unable by their means to explain them in a satisfactory manner. A few of these instances I wish, through your Magazine, to state to the public, because, believing, as I do, that the principles are in a great measure correct, I cannot but hope, that a more complete investigation, and a clearer insight into the new laws, will essentially tend to render our ideas of chemical science, more simple, and. therefore more accordant, with the ordinary course of nature. These new doctrines, however, certainly want in vestigation, as, in all probability, there will be a necessity for new-modelling my present ideas in some degree, before we shall arrive at that truth, which is so necessary for the establishment of general principles. In the first place, therefore, why do not the metals themselves, in preference to their oxides, unite with acids when presented to them? This they ought to do, if it is true, that the more oxigen is contained in any substance, the more powerful are its negative energies; whereas, in reality, here are metals which are inflammable, and therefore positive, not capable of uniting with acids which are negative, unless a large dose of the negative principle be added to them, by which the two bodies will be brought nearer to each other in their electrical states, and therefore ought to become less likely to unite. Or why do not earths, which are positive, unite with oxigen, which contains a smaller quantity of electricity (or is more negative), than any substance with which we are acquainted; when they unite with acids which contain so much oxigen, as to be indebted for all their properties to the quantity of that body which enters into their composition? Or, since oils contain so much oxigen, as not only to be negative with regard to the oils, but even to the alkalis also? for, by the new law of bodies uniting together more strongly in proportion to the opposition of their electrical states, the union of oils and acids ought to be far stronger than that between the oils and alkalis; whereas, in fact, oils and acids have no affinity for each other. The same reasoning may be applied to the mixture of oils and water, &c. After having stated these apparent anomalies in Mr. Davy's theory, I shall refrain from mentioning many others, which a further examination would point out, being contented with having opened a door for discussion, which I hope will lead to a more complete elucidation or corection of these doctrines of the ingenious and learned professor. Your's, &c. CHAL HALMERS, in his Life of Sir David Lyndsay, vol. 1. p. 49, has engraved an old stone, now in a farm house, at the Mount, with these arms, &c.-A fess checqué, in chief three mullets; in base, a heart; impaling three escutcheons, in fess, a thistle: on the dexter side of these arms are, J. L. and on the sinister, A. H. and at the base, 1650. He says, "it is apparent that the dexter," |