armour, and suddenly appears before his palace gates, a burnished apparition. Nebaioth arrives with intelligence that his mission had been useless, and Sardanapalus issues immediate orders for battle, but is withheld by the prudence of Salamenes. The Assyrian priests encourage him to the war; but an Israelitish seer, in a long speech, the echo of many that preceded it, denounces woe and disaster. The King, somewhat alarmed, flings him down a gem to purchase a more consoling vision, which the Hebrew refuses, but which is prudently picked up by a clergyman of the establishment, and put into his pocket. Sardanapalus employs the day in going from host to host, and rousing their patriotism. Towards evening, the Bactrians, and all the host, "From Sogdiana northward, to the south Of Arachosia, by the banks of Ind," weary of the whole concern, and unwilling to get hard blows, resolve to be off, and leave Sardanapalus and Arbaces to fight it out for Nineveh. The King then retires to his palace, and revels high among his concubines. He orders the seer to be called in, and presses him to a bumper; but he will not accept it from the hand of the fair Azubah, and boldly counsels Sardanapalus against the poison of the cup. "Wretch !' Exclaim'd the king, and started from his throne, And on the floor the golden goblet hurl'd; Thou miscreant priest! comest here to tutor me?" " The seer, nothing daunted, most provokingly thrusts Azubah from him, exclaiming, "Woman! guished, and the King and his concubine retire to bed. This incident, which, doubtless, Mr Atherstone thinks very striking and characteristic, is very poorly, very badly managed. We are disgusted with the brutality of the seer, and rather enjoy his fate on the floor, till we see that he has been killed outright; and even then, considering the intolerable provocation the King had received from a seer to whom he had at least been civil, and his unpremeditated crime, we are sorry for him, and look without pity on the attendants, when ordered, as Hamlet says of dead Polonius, to remove that luggage. Book Fifth opens with a description of Sardanapalus haunted by remorse on to his morning dreams(another vision)-and tended lovingly by Azubah. But Salamenes, in full armour, bursts into the chamber, and tells him of the new revolt, and the flight of the Bactrians, " and all the nations of the farthest East." Meanwhile "hot Jerimoth," without orders, had fallen, with all his twenty thousand horse, on the Babylonian infantry, which for a time he broke, but was ere long repelled by thirty thousand bowmen, under Azariah and the Arabian chivalry, many hundred squadrons strong. This brings on a general engagement, on which seem to hang the destinies of Nineveh. The battle rages for many hours with alternate fortune, till at last Arbaces and Sardanapalus meet in single combat. The King, after a gallant stand, is beaten insensible to the ground with his cloven helmet, and Arbaces is about to take him prisoner, when Abner, one of his captains, cries "Up-up into your chariot-for your life Get back, and touch me not! I know Leap up-ten thousand horse-away— thee now, away!" Salamenes advances to the rescue, and the King is borne away, fainting, to the city in his chariot. Atossa, and her daughter Nehushta, who had been watching the battle from the walls, discern the chariot; and, ere long, on the palace stairs meet the wounded monarch. Peresh, the physician, orders him a cooling draught, which, after much persuasion, he swallows, having long lustily called for wine. He is sent to bed, and the Book closes. The Sixth Book opens with a description of the Love-Bower of Nehushta, and Dara, the King's charioteer; and this passage is, we think, not only the least bad in the poem, but in itself not far from good. There is not in it, it is true, one original image, and it is manifestly made up almost wholly of materials existing not in nature, as nature revealed herself to Mr Atherstone's eye, but in the breathings of other poets. Still it is not without a certain richness and luxuriance, which nearly approach the beautiful; and from it we are disposed to think that Mr Atherstone, were he to give up Epic poetry, for which he has not one single qualification, and addict himself to the descriptive, might possibly produce something "in the soft line" not much amiss. While Dara, who has had enough of charioteering for one day, is making love to Nehushta, and beguiling her of her tears by the narration of the past perils of her father, the battle continues to rage with great fury, but is going against the Assyrians. The heroic Queen Atossa resolves, if possible, to retrieve the fortune of the day, by appearing before the Assyrian army in the armour of Sardanapalus-rather a grotesque imitation of Patroclus in the armour of Achilles-and has begun to don it, when the king awakes, and, informed of her noble design, seizes her for a moment in his arms, impresses one burning kiss on her cheek, arms himself in a moment, and hurries to his chariot. “Swift as an eagle shooting from a cloud, From out the gates a single chariot rush'd! Erect the rider stood,-a golden shield Upon his left arm grasping,-in his right A spear, and on his head a gleaming helm, Shout out aloud! and lift th' avenging sword, For now their hour is come!" That is not poorly conceived; but it is poorly expressed. Oh! how much better, had the last feeble eight lines been but four or two, and the four or two strong! The rebel army recoils, with "inroad gored;" nightfall darkens the field; there is some hot skirmishing in the gloom, but the main battles separate, the Medes to their camp, and the Assyrians to the city;-and thus closes the Sixth and last Book as yet published of Nineveh. Let us conclude with some criticism on this Epic Poem. We presume, and hope, that these six books are nearly one half of the work. Has, then, Mr Atherstone succeeded in bringing before our imagination the city of Nineveh? No. The royal palace, and some of her gardens, he has described tolerably well; but we never, for a moment, are made to see and to feel that we are in the heart of that famous old metropolis. That her walls were huge and high, and many-towered, and of prodigious circumference, we knew before, and he has added nothing to the vividness or grandeur of our conceptions. He addresses her often and often, and bestows on her many fine-sounding names. But she rises not before us at his command, either in poetical gloom or glory,— and, for the most part, she is a blank. In the hands of a great, or a good, or a true poet, it could not have been so; and the failure is decisive in the negative of the question, is Mr Atherstone, or is he not, a man of genius? Yet, observe how incessantly he labours to produce a phantasmagorial picture of her glories! and how faint and feeble is his oft-repeated touch! "Imperial Nineveh, the carthly queen, In all her golden pomp I see her now." "In golden light Magnificent the mighty city stands, "Of Nineveh, the mighty city of old, "On Nineveh's proud towers the sinking sun In cloudless splendour looks, nor through diamond-naved, jewel-spoked chariot, to that? Or hear Shakspeare the earth Like glory doth behold." "Surely this mighty city shall be Queen Of all the earth for ever." The day of her exulting is gone by." "Great Nineveh ! The day of thy destruction is at hand." No bounds can, in the nature of things, be set to such eternal repetition. He ought to have dashed her character off in some glorious epithet or two, and been done with his exclamations, instead of playing the part of a mere stupid showman-" This, gentlemen, is the great Polar monster -hear how he roars !" and then stir. ring him up with a long pole at every new influx of visitors, to the same monotonous drawl. "Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France, For ere thou canst report, The thunder of my cannon shall be heard!" So ought, in a heroic poem, execution to follow command-order and action one, and time itself annihilated in the melée. But Mr Atherstone is slow and sententious in orders as an archdeacon. His generals are all fonder of talking than of fightinglose more breath by words than blows -prove the goodness of their wind more by mouthing than marching— and previous to each movement publish an oral bulletin. There is, indeed, a superabundance of shouting; for example "Then rose to heaven Clamours terrific-shouts and cries went up." "Their shoutings mocked the thunder." Shout out aloud." "With a shout, Louder than thunder, all that mighty host Nor is Mr Atherstone a war-poet. Most unfortunate for him was the choice of a subject in which fighting is the order of the day. How picturesque is every single combat in old Homer! How momentously rife the whole field of battle! Troy's turrets are seen shooting victorious-Sound all the trumpets-shake the flags ly in the clear blue sky, or in portentous thunder-gloom nodding to their fall. Or hear Sir Walter's Squire in Flodden Field, "My basnet to a prentice cap, "At times a warning trumpet blown, on high, Shout, heralds, shout." " And all that heard him shouted, and cried out." "Then went up the shouts From Azariah and from all his host." "The voice of every soldier was sent up to heaven In shouts that rent the air." "At that sight, a shout "Everywhere the shouts Increasing tore the air." "Hark-hark-the countless nations shout for joy." "But then he hears a million solemn shouts." Whether she hail the wine-cup or the fight! And bid each arm be strong, or bid each heart be light." Aye-there speaks the Fuet, and you hear as well as see, where, "Still as they land, the Red-cross bands unite, Legions on legions brightening all the . shores!" To rush, is a most military verb. How nobly Campbell uses it in Lochiel's Warning! "So rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth From his home mid the dark-rolling clouds of the North." And how nobly too in his Hohenlinden! "The combat deepens on, ye brave, Who rush to glory or the grave !" 2 We have seen "how King James did rushing come." And, lo! "Housings and saddle bloody red, Lord Marmion's steed rush'd by." But Scott and Campbell, Lochiel and Marmion, are not eternally rushing, though we grant that rushing they often are, when they say nothing "Will not their swords leap out? Their about it. But Mr Atherstone and all shouts ascend." "When they rose They shouted, and the cry went up to heaven." "At once a thousand trumpets from the walls Answered the shout." Is not Mr Atherstone himself petrified with the sight of these shouts, now that he sees them on paper? Much shouting must there doubtless be in a great battle, especially before the invention of gunpowder: for after that, shouting was found in general to be of no avail-but we take it for granted, and to specify each particular shout, Mr Atherstone has found, by experience, to be an endless task. Hear Sir Walter "And oft was heard that thrice repeated cry, In which old Albion's heart and hand unite his heroes break out from morning till night in a "rush," as in a cold sweat. For example : "And towards the spot terrific was the rush." "Was now the rush and uproar of the fight." "But in his chariot rushing furiously." The Assyrians fled, and towards the city rush'd." "Right towards the Mede they rushed." "For the rush and the trampling came to his ear." "On the rushing spoke the rushing weapon struck." "Through every wide-flown gate faster rushed they." After all this ceaseless shouting and reiterated rushing, the deafened reader longs for repose. He shouts faintly, like a cuckoo at close of day, for his slippers, and rushes like a snail to bed. But no. Ten times this amount of shouting and rushing would, in Mr Atherstone's idea of the thing, not suffice, without some elu cidation of these phenomena. Accordingly, he shews how orders were issued for the rush; and explains both cause and effect, by the use in perpetuity to himself and heirs for ever, of the word-On. To rush is, we said above, a very military verb, ̈ so is "on" a still more military adverb. "On, ye brave!" of Campbell, we have already commended. "Charge, Chester, charge-on-Stanley, on, Were the last words of Marmion." And an excellent last speech and dying words they were, and cheap on brown paper at a penny. "Wha for Scotland's King and law, Freedom's sword would strongly draw, Freeman stand, or freeman fa', Caledonia, on wi' me!" That will do-Robert Burns and Robert Bruce. But why, in the name of all that is sedentary, keep calling to all eternity, "On-on-on-on,"-to people already rushing? Now hear Mr Atherstone |