poem that may be justly characterized by the same terms as those which we have applied to its preface. For instance, -and we take the passage at random, - let us waste a noment on the following Receipt for an Appetite. 6 No-far from Grandeur, and her proud abode, Thread the wild thicket, the rude waste explore, On the cold ground, your fainting limbs be stretch'd, The useful lesson, too, perchance you gain, Can any thing be much duller, much more hackneyed, than this? The vile puns of patient sole' and domestic wheys' have numerous play-fellows to keep them in countenance throughout the book: as, for example, From my worn arm the iron arm I threw, Such is the description of the Soldier's Return; in which we see nothing that can fairly raise a smile, except, perhaps, the following parody: The evident delight of the author consists in the poorest kinds of the paronomasia : Can our readers wish for any more fruit from so ill-culti vated a garden? We - We would admonish Mr, Busk that Laocoon is a word of four syllables, as well as the rhyme which he has chosen to affix to it, Dēmŏphčōn. Grouped with Lestrygones the Laocoon. Phyllis, her almond-tree, and Demophoon.' 'The Tea,' also, is execrable. No hurried stage-coach breakfast ever afforded worse, under the administration of the most timid votary of the cannister. With tea some draw ideas from Penang, Oft deem'd both meat and drink, and boil'd and roast, • The Rose,' a minor poem, with which the collection concludes, is certainly a "rose without a thorn," if we may imitate the author's disposition to punning, for a more pointless little effort we do not recollect to have witnessed: but it is far from being a flower unattended by weeds, and affords another exemplification of the truth of the old remark, "Urtica proxima sæpe rosa est." The Latin quotations in the notes, in which the writer has endeavoured to display as much of his polyglott treasures as he possibly could, are in several instances very carelessly printed. Among others, we may notice rosæ for rosa, uberu for ubere, magus for majus, &c. &c. - We have, however, a more serious cause of complaint against Mr. Busk, for occupying nine or ten pages of his notes with transcripts from the "Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica," under colour of consulting the health of his readers! If this be not book-making, we know no practice that deserves the title. We come now to the Vestriad.' The preface to this work presents a crude mass of English, Greek, French, and Latin, intended to be very learned, on the stale subject of the Origin of Satire. How could Mr. Busk imagine that the frivolous and operatic readers, to whom he must principally look for the popularity of his work, would endure the prosing into which a desire of display has led him? He congratulates, however, those readers and himself, on having shortened his work by avoiding the triplet, and monosyllabic line; as well as the enjambement and Alexandrine'!!!-a most novel expedient, 0 3 expedient, it must be confessed. Let us see how it has been carried into practice. The story of the Vestriad' is, simply, that of the supplanting of Vestris in Parisian favour, by the more recent excellence of Duport. To relish this important subjectmatter, the reader must be well acquainted with the interior of the opera at Paris, and with various names and events of which the majority of our fellow-countrymen are as yet in ignorance. It is lamentable to think how much good time, ink, and paper, and what really creditable stores of reading, Mr. Busk has lavished on the heavy trifle before us! Half of the number of pages, (which amount at present to 223, exclusive of notes,) half of the interlarding of classical allusions with unclassical pronunciation, and some little power of precision, point, and force, would have rendered this work very different from that which it now is, and as much more amusing to the reader as it would have been more honourable to the writer. Vestris, resolving to leave Paris, and alluding to his father under the character of Ulysses, thus addresses his Eucharissa: "Yet need I emigrate to search so far, A father who ne'er pass'd the Boulevard ? Who shunn'd no Siren, and who sought no seers, Nor had he, would have startled at their howl, "Perjur'd, unkind, insensible!" said she, Is not this sufficient? We can find nothing better in the volume: but we shall refer those readers, who wish for more of the same material, to several kindred passages: -such as the answer of the lady, and the reply of Vestris, immediately subsequent ; 15 subsequent; interspersed, as usual, with puny puns (as Mr. Busk himself would phrase it) of a merit equal to the subjoined: 'Who bore from Sor her sorrow and her tears.' 'Who husbands fate, and Tyre and tyrant fled.' For instances of the pronunciation to which we have alluded above, we quote, among many others, the following:'Mitylēnē,' made to rhyme to 'scene;' 'Both Ajǎces, two thunderbolt Atrides.' Such things achiev'd Pylades and Bathyllus ;' and all these elegancies occur in the same page. - - Again: 'With wives and children, and Di Penates.' The player's motto-spectĕmur agendo." And Deidamia is the name they call her;' or, (if Mr. B. prefers it,) 'And Deidamia,' &c. ''Twas in Lipāra's forge the ore was cast.' Cum multis aliis, &c. &c. Really, after this, it requires some charity to attribute all the wrong printing, and wrong quoting in the notes, to accident or carelessness. Need we remind the author that it is a clumsy joke indeed to attach to Juvenal such a line as "Dæmones auxilio qui princeps Dæmoniorum ?” - but Mr. Busk fathers much vernacular nonsense on foreign and even on classical writers. "Quorsum hæc ?"-With a respectable share of information, some quickness of conception, and some facility of expressing himself, Mr. Busk appears to be capable of better things than he has here offered us. We are afraid of exceeding justice in our praise, or we should say that we think he is capable even of silence. ART. XII. An History of Muhammedanism: comprising the Life and Character of the Arabian Prophet, and succinct Accounts of the Empires founded by the Muhammedan Arms: an Inquiry into the Theology, Morality, Laws, Literature, and Usages of the Muselmans, and a View of the present State and Extent of the Muhammedan Religion. By Charles Mills. Second Edition. 8vo. pp. 484. 12s. Boards. Black and Co. THE HE public favour has been deservedly bestowed on this learned, elegant, and compendious history of Muhamnedanism; which gives a comprehensive yet succinct account of the various empires founded by the Muhammedan arms in Asia, Africa, and Europe; and which includes instructive notices of the theology, morality, laws, literature, and usages of the Moslems. It will bear comparison with Salaberry's History of the Turks, which was attentively noticed by us in vol. lxxix. p. 472. Mr. Mills's work is divided into seven chapters, of which the first examines the life of Muhammed; for such is the orthography preferred by the author for the name of the Arabian prophet. To a geographical description of Arabia, succeeds a character of the inhabitants, of their habitual polity, and of their original or early religion. Here Mr. Mills overlooks, we think, a principal cause of the eventual success of Islamism, from the want of having formed to himself a clear idea of the religion of the antient Persians; concerning which, Hyde has long been suffered to mislead Europe. Sir John Malcolm, also, not having duly studied the Hebrew records, has not known how to illuminate the twilight of early Persian history. The religion of the Parthian empire, from the time of Cyrus to the Macedonian conquest, may be said to have been identical with that of the Jews, since Ezra has preserved a genuine proclamation of Cyrus, in which this great fact is solemnly recorded; and the book of Esther narrates with complacency that proscription of the idolatrous priesthood which Herodotus terms the Magophonia, which was accomplished with the concurrence of Daniel under the sway of Darius, and which was anniversarily celebrated at the temple of Jerusalem, under the name of the feast of Purim. Palestine was to the Persians what Tibet was to the Chinese, the independent sovereignty, the holy land of the priests of the empire. If the Zoroaster of Greek be the Ezra of Jewish history, so is the Zerduscht of the Parsees. No images were tolerated in the Persian temples; a perpetual fire, or shekinah, was fed on the altar; and an emblematic reverence for the sun, and for light, formed a part of the ritual. Still this was not, as Hyde pretends, fire-worship or sun-worship, but a worship of the one only living and true God, the God of Abraham, of Moses, of Daniel, and of Ezra. It may be true that the Persians adored him in his triple capacity of the creator, preserver, and destroyer of all things; and that they had separate names for these capacities, such as Ormuz, Mithra, and Ariman, answering to the Adonai, Jehovah, and Satan of the Hebrews: yet this pantheism was a religion strictly unitarian. When the Greeks conquered Persia, the idolaters, or polytheists, recovered a certain degree of ascendancy there; and the unitarians, or monotheists, though not persecuted with all |