We have long wished for a proper opportunity to write an Essay on Epic Poetry-and here is one; while, unluckily, deuce an idea will rise up in the dark interior of our pericranium. The truth is, we have read Mr Atherstone till we have become almost-you would not believe us, did we say wholly-as stupid as himself; and how stupid that is, you perhaps partly may know, by reading either this Article or the Fall of Nineveh. Whether Christopher North or Edwin Atherstone is at this hour the stupider individual, it would be highly presumptuous in us to affirm positively; but we may venture to hint that the advantage lies rather on our side, and that the effect is greater than could be explained on philosophical principles-greater even than its cause. To speak more precisely, our stupidity, viewed as an effect of him the cause, leaves the author of its existence so much in the background, that it becomes difficult to affiliate it upon Mr Atherstone; and yet as certainly as that the sun is not now clear at noonday, he is the parent at whose door our stupidity must be laid; and if he have any bowels, he will treat kindly this his Crying Sin.

We feel as if the perusal of this

poem had effected a startling change on our mental constitution. Stupid enough for common occasions we had often been before that perusal, as all our readers will cheerfully allow; but since that perusal our stupidity has not only assumed a more settled aspect, but a far firmer form, and, we verily believe, a more determined character. That which was, in other days, transient as a cloud, is now permanent as a hill-top. Our stupidity, like that of the other patient's, is no less chronic than acute; so the world must not wonder, if in a few years, say half a century, Blackwood's Magazine should become, in sheer stupidity, not far inferior to the last number of the Monthly Review-a periodical which, under its present very skilful management, it is interesting to see keeping just below that degree of stupidity, above which it was proved-by the death of the Critical that nothing mortal can breathe, any more than a frog in an air-exhausted receiver.

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Yet though, in our present paroxysm, unfit to compose an Essay on Epic Poetry, how pleasant to think of old Homer! And what would he think of us, were he restored to life, and especially of Mr Atherstone? Why, it would not be easy to find out

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that; for as Homer would, of course, be restored to blindness, during Mr Atherstone's recitation of his poem, we might erroneously suspect the old Grecian of being asleep-as, on the other hand, we might just as unjust ly accuse the old gentleman of being awake. Our perplexity would, however, in all probability be ended erelong by a portentous snore, enough to shake to its foundations the Temple of Ninus, and effect the Fall of Nineveh.

For old Homer would be intolerant of prosing-and in prosing Mr Atherstone excels all the children of men.

He has unluckily acquired considerable power over a consider able number of words in the English language, which obsequiously obey his commands, issued with an air of authority which smells of the schoolmaster. But his mind is as slow as an expiring top. It does not," spinning, sleep," though it dozes; and you wonder, while it continues wambling on, that it does not all at once fall down stone-dead. It was quite the reverse with the mind of old Homer. His was indeed a striking specimen of the Perpetual Motion-and not only swung, but sung and shone like a planet. No man of woman born ever fell asleep over the Iliad. A few lines of it has cured the most comatose; that prescription has made lethargy leap up from his chair, and roam the house like a somnambulist. One paper of Atherstone's powders, again, can lull even an evil conscience. Under its benign influence we ourselves, with two gouty great toes, walked at the rate of five miles an hour into the Land of Nod. In a quarter of an hour or less, has his patent soporific changed a family naturally feverish into the Seven Sleepers.

Very dim, indeed-as of all things else is our memory of the Iliad. But we do remember this, that there was one Hector, whom we did dearly-devoutly love; and for whose sake we loved Troy-town almost like Auld Reekie. For and with an old man called Priam, we remember having wept till we were blind; for the eyes of a boy are as suddenly filled with tears as tulips are with rain, and as suddenly, too, shake out the shower to the first air of joy that comes rustling by with the wakened

sunshine. What we were to Hecuba, we know not; but what Hecuba was to us, we do know-Why, she was the very image of our grandmother! As for Andromache, there seems to reside a spirit of sadness in the name! It breathes to us of all most Wifelike in the Beautiful. We know not why-but we love Mrs Gentle for her sake! As for poor Helen-she was hated only-by herself; in spite of her fatal sin, Troy loved and pitied her-Hecuba, Priam, Hector, Andromache and alland perhaps the member of the Royal Family who cared least for her at last was-Paris. As for Achilles, we feared him, so brave and beautiful, so swiftfooted, and, as we dreamt, invulnerable. Had it not been for Hector, we might have loved the son of Thetis ; but round the waving crest of the Bien aime, all our hopes and fears kept watch, as if to ward off the weapon of that dreadful demigod!-Turning from Troy to Nineveh, the mind or a man undergoes as violent a revulsion as if he were torn away by Fate from a Noctes Ambrosianæ, and set down to a lecture on Phrenology in the Society's Hall in Clyde Street. He experiences within one little hour the extremes of human life-the utmost imaginable brightness and glory

the last pitch of opacity and gloom; and wonders if he indeed be still an inhabitant of one and the same world! In presence of the Iliad every man is a hero. Reading old Homer is like marching along with a full band of instrumental music. You would willingly walk on to death. But the drone of Atherstone absolutely inspires cowardice. You are transmogrified into Corporal Fear-would fain hide yourself among the baggage-waggons-sigh for the society of Friends, and on your relinquishment of a military life, resolve to be come a Wet-Quaker.

Whether Sardanapalus kills Arbaces -we are alluding now to Mr Atherstone's two chief heroes-or vice versa, is to us a mere matter of moonshine

of as utter indifference as the issue of a battle between any two wasps when about to enter the mouth of a bottle of sugar of lead, placed for the protection of a royal race of red hairy gooseberries. His Queen of Nineveh is an absolute scold—and

we almost wish that the town were taken-if only to silence that dreadful bell-her tongue. As for concubines-and such cattle-they may burn away at their leisure in the sack of Nineveh-a city for whose fate, as it is seen through Mr Ather stone's telescope, we feel about as much interest as for the Metropolis of the Moon.

An Epic Poem then, without an essay upon it, it is allowed on all hands, is always in the writing, and too often in the reading, a serious business. In the reading, mortal man is apt to fall into the arms of Death's brother-Sleep. Fortunately, the end of each Book, of which we may suppose twelve or twenty-four affords an excellent opportunity for us to restore tired nature. There stands a Spittal-such as that of Glenshee; and though it would be too much to expect there, either for love or money, board-the traveller being expected to carry his provisions along with him-yet he gets a good, dry, hard bed onwhich to stretch his wearied limbs and frame, and a few hours repose strengthens him for the next stage. A prudent man, with a sound constitution, may thus walk his way, with moderate fatigue, through the longest and most mountainous Epic, and be as fresh-for the journey is, in fact, the best of all training-at the end of three weeks, as on the very day he set out on his undertaking, the odds having been perhaps three to one on time.

Mr Atherstone's Epic is, he has given us to understand, a lengthy one; and we have gone along it as far as the great road is finished. Mists and clouds hang dense over the distance; and if the future be as the past, it will be a toilsome pilgrimage. But we shall "set a stout heart to a stae brae;" and after a cold bath in the pool of Oblivion, what a profound and dreamless sleep shall we not have the night after the completion of what will then be considered the greatest pedestrian exploit on record!

To speak plainly, what could have put it into the head of this honest gentleman to go to Nineveh? Why did he not, before tackling to the master-work of an Epic Poem, exercise his 'prentice hand in writing assiduously for seven years in Ladies'

Albums, and afterwards for seven years more as a journeyman in the Annuals? The young mason begins wi' dry stane-dykes, as we say in Scotland; thence aspires to a pigstye, from which the ascent is easy to a cottage. From cottage he mounts to kirk, from kirk to steeple, and from steeple to one of the pillars of the Parthenon of our Modern Athens. Such is the natural steps by which Mr Atherstone should have approached towards " building up the lofty rhyme." But no; this hum-drum common-sense precedure did not suit his aspiring genius; and disdaining a preparatory course of anagrams, sonnets, elegies, and Dramatic Scenes and Sketches, with plumb-line and trowel he has undertaken to construct an edifice of enormous dimen sions-an Epic Poem. The consequence has been, that he has given rise to a structure of a very equivocal, ambiguous, and singular character-not so like a temple for worship, which it was designed to be, as a barn for shearers, or rather a barracks for soldiers-bulky enough, it is true, but with very few windows, and these rather narrow, so that there is but little light in the interior of the building, with a roof leaded along the rigging it is equally true, but too flat for this rainy climate,-and with stacks of chimneys so wide at the mouth, that every room, even the sleeping ones, which is a very bad case, must be infested with smoke sadly, and the worst place in the world for pictures. It will neither sell nor let.

But Mr Atherstone is a learned man, and knows more about Nineveh than perhaps any other scholar in Europe. The work, he tells us, in which he found condensed the greatest portion of information relative to Assyrian story, is, that rare work "The Universal History." There may, he modestly says, be others far

more comprehensive and satisfactory, but that he has not had the good fortune to meet with them." made numerous memoranda of notes, which he thought might be illustrative of the subject, or which might, at the least, offer to the attention of the reader" a pleasing diversion." But he has not had time to prepare them for the press; and it is fortunate for those who may undertake

his volume that he had not; for they will not, we can assure them, be in a condition, at the end of his or their performance, to enter with becoming spirit into any "pleasing diversion." No doubt the perusal of a quantity of unmeasured, after so much measured prose, might have had the effect of bringing into play a different set of muscles of the mind; but still, such alternation of labour answers the purpose only when the fatigue is moderate; in cases of extreme exertion, it is not found to give the desired relief. Mr Atherstone had prepared, and also intended to publish with this poem, a Preface, which would have occupied perhaps seventy or eighty pages; but that preface he has been advised by some humane and merciful friend-some friend, indeed, of the species-to omit. Now, men there may be in this active work-day world with as good bone and bottom as ourselves, and through the poem, as it now consists of six long stages, they may possibly, as we have been, provided the weather be good, and the days long, by means of what must appear to many a miracle, under divine providence, be brought at last,-without any worse malady than a slow fever, to be assuaged by a few grains of opium. But we who are familiarly acquainted with most, nay, all the best pedestrians in Britain, and have, in all the matches we ever had with them, through prose or verse, or through that heaviest of all ground, a mixed style, never once been beat, can assure Mr Atherstone that there is not one on the list who could do such a Preface, such a Poem, and such Notes, within the solar year. The preface itself would be a tough job-all up-hill work. The pedestrian might undoubt edly recover second wind in doing the first part of the poem--but in what state would his sinews be in the sixth? And though game might bring him through, it would be cruelty to wish, and madness to expect, that within the terms of the match he could limp the notes. We repeat it, the preface itself, in a month, would be no every-day performance-the poem without the preface would be firstrate with it, something quite extraordinary, but preface, poem, and notes, would be miraculous, and in

the sporting poetical world deemed impossible. It therefore would not be a fair bet-but a bubble.

The preface, however, which Mr Atherstone has given, is short and flat, and therefore not much of a performance for even a third-rate pedestrian. The accomplishment of it, within the four-and-twenty hours, would not deserve a place in a com- › mon newspaper, and any notice of it

We

would be at once rejected by the intelligent editor of Bell's Life in London. We won in a canter, without piping or turning a hair, an hour within the time. We are kindly and considerately informed in it," that such cities as Nineveh and Babylon existed"-and that, too, with a grandeur perhaps never equalled. We are glad of this, for we cannot bear to hear of any old and grand cities, of which we read in history, being denied existence. It forces us to believe they were wholly fabulous and fictitious; and it is impossible to feel the same interest about nothing as about something, about mere imaginary brick and mortar, or stone and lime, as about those real materials themselves-real, that is to say, while they existed in that shape, and real indeed while they continue to exist in dust and ashes. beg leave, therefore, to return our best thanks to Mr Atherstone, who, we believe, is a man of the most scrupulous veracity, for having given us the assurance of his word that Babylon and Nineveh did exist, and perhaps with a grandeur unequalled;-including, of course, the tower of Ninus and the tower of Belus-two towers for which we have always had a particular respect, nay, the very highest admiration; and also those hanging gardens, which must have been equally beautiful and magnificent, and, what is more, a great comfort and luxury to the inhabitants of the metropolis. We had forgotten, we are sorry to say, who first built Nineveh, but Mr Atherstone has, in his notes curtailed from the originals which he has not had time to prepare for the press, refreshed our memory by re-informing us that it was Ninus, who was succeeded by his widow Semiramis, (of whom some curious particulars are to be found in a very rare work

indeed an unique-which it is scarcely possible Mr Atherstone can have seen, as it has been lying for half a century in our possession-penes me, Lempriere's Classical Dictionary,) who, towards the close of her life, surrendered it to their son Ninyas, or, as we call it in Scotland, euphoniæ et brevitatis causâ— Ringan,―as for example in Mr Galt's celebrated novel, Ringan Gilhaize. By Ringan, we are sorry to be informed by Mr Atherstone,-on the authority of that rare work the Universal History, and by Lempriere in his Classical Dictionary, now, as we said, an unique-was set that example of indolence and vicious effeminacy, which is said to have been imitated by the long train of monarchs which intervened between him and the overthrow of the empire under Sardanapalus.

We are thus brought down, in the preface and notes, to the time and place when and where Mr Atherstone's Epic poem, Nineveh, opens -the time being a short time previous to the overthrow of the Assyrian monarchy under Sardanapalus, by the suicide of that king, and the place Nineveh-not Babylon, as the hasty and careless reader might falsely imagine, from its name being mentioned along with Nineveh in the preface-the words being Babylon and Nineveh.

Next to the Universal Dictionary, MrAtherstone's favourite authority in his notes concerning Nineveh is Mr Buckingham, who lately, we understand, though we were not there to hear, lectured with considerable eclat, first in the Hopetoun, George's Street, and afterwards the Waterloo Rooms, Waterloo Buildings, Edinburgh, to respectable audiences of all sexes, on Oriental affairs in general, and in particular on the East India Company's monopoly of tea; and next to Mr Buckingham, comes that good old-fashioned book the Bible. The reader, therefore, comes to the perusal of the Epic prepared with full and authentic information regarding its subject-matter-Nineveh and Sardanapalus.

Mr Atherstone labours to prove, in his prose, that Sardanapalus may have indulged to excess in sensuality, but he could not have been the drivelling, disgusting, idiotic sensualist;

he may have painted his cheeks and attired himself as a woman, but must have had within him the energies of a man!!" Had he really been the drivelling, disgusting, idiotic sensualist, Mr Atherstone judiciously observes" that his character would not have been unfit for the hero of an epic poem only, but even for the monster of the most prosing fable." He therefore, far more wisely than some historians, conceives Sardanapalus to have been "a man of good and evil mingled: one that, in other circumstances, and under wiser tuition, would have been great and virtuous : whose ungovernable fury might have been a generous enthusiasm,-whose all-devouring sensuality might have been ardent, devoted love,-whose unrelenting tyranny over others might have been stern self-control,whose implacable resentment against rebellion might have been heroic resistance against oppression. He has within him a fire that, wisely tended, might have given warmth, and splendour, and enjoyment; but which, uncontrolled, becomes a conflagration that consumes him."

This is very antithetical and philosophical-but we cannot think it so very original as it seems to be in the eyes of the bard. It amounts to this and little more, that Sardanapalus was a spoiled child. But we do not quarrel with the character on that score-for a vast of meaning lies in the two words, spoiled child-nor can there be a fitter subject for either an Epic poem or a Tragedy than a spoiled child. And all thinking people must see that, on a very little reflection. Who can forget for a moment Little Pickle, in the farce of that name? We have another drift. Pray, did Mr Atherstone ever read a Drama by Byron with that namenot Little Pickle, but Sardanapalus? "But for his encouragement, (Mr Martin, the celebrated painter,) and that of one other most esteemed friend, I should not, probably, after Byron's appropriation of it, have ventured upon the subject." He has read Byron's noble Drama, thenand notwithstanding that prevailing poet's appropriation of it, he has ventured on the subject. And can any mortal man in this wide world conjecture why? Was he dissatisfied with Byron's conception of the cha