The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-04 00:00:00

Dull in great thoughts, in little how acute!
He soars a god—now grovels with the brute.
He toils, but idly toils ; Oblivion's hand
Blots out his works—slight figures stamp'd on sand•
Vain his hopes burn, his glory-babbles rise,
He greatly schemes, but as he schemes he dies •
One moment seen, then gone ; so, darkly pass
Quick flying cloud-shades o'er the summer grass.
As this small globe to all the mighty spheres,
Such his brief life•point to eternal years.
What can he boast, fast chained by fate below,
Gnawed, like Prometheus; by a vulture—Woe?
What can he boast, plumed Wisdom's highest flight
Pursued through mists of doubt, and error's night ;
The melancholy truth made clear alone,
That light is veiled, troth's glories half unknown ^
Oh ! weep for man, but most lament his pride ;
This Heaven condemns—this, this the fiends detid,
The portrait is not a flattering one, but the
extract shall be a pleasing sketch of a rural ev
ing, apparently in a " sleepy hollow" :
An English village: down the drowsy West
The broad-faced sun, like Labour, sinks to rest.
No wind to stir the steeple's lazy vane,
A mellow topaz burns each cottage pane.
The idle kine low softly on the lea,
The idle peasant smokes beneath the tree ;
The idle stream just lapses smooth and slow,
And honied flowers are idly bending low.
Some spell arrests the busy tide of life ;
Hashed the green spot, as if no care or strife
Could e'er bring discord to a scene so calm,
Where earth looks meek content, and heaven is dal,.
And now, in a different style, the burning
Moscow :
Hark to the cry of fire !—mad voices shout ;
Like snakes of vengeance, red•tongued flames bra';
Wreath vault and dome, and course from street to sue.
Ye hear the hiss, the rush of flying feet ;
And oft, 'mid some dread pause, with sudden flash,
Bell•laden, burning towers, down tottering, crash •
O'er works of Art, o'er treasures none may Mr.
Sweeps a red-surging sea, the fiery wave.
Destruction holds high carnival, and Fear
Mutters her charm, and shakes her hell•locks hero.

These extracts may serve to give a spice of Mr.
.lichell's quality, and to stimulate or satisfy the
curiosity of the general reader.
2. Mr. Robertson plaintively bewails his hard
lot in lacking alike " the soberness for prose, the
" soul for poesy." In this he resembles the
bourgeois gentilhomme who had been 4peaking
prose all his life without knowing it. So Mr.
Robertson writes excellent prose, though by
breaking the continuity of his words he has been
led to imagine that he was wreathing chaplets of
verse—the only trace of imagination, by the
way, that we have been able to detect in his
wide-margined pages. Let the reader judge
between us :

Aud Samuel rode upon an ass, and went. He vac.]
heifer with him, for he feared lest Saul should learn I
cause for which be went, and slay him ; so he purpo
with himself to veil his secret errand with the ma.t
sacrifice ; and on his way he weal to where the sou'
Judah tilled the land. He passed the city of the Isbusi
the olive•crowned hill, and saw the stream of Kra
flowing round the sides of Sion—Cbemosh was being w
shipped in the vale—and came among the bare and dn.
hills of Bethlehem, where shepherds watched their dee
and drank their sour milk on the bleak hillsides.
If this be poetry, then are we also a poet. a/
perchance, one fine morning may "hang our In
"on some lone tree, and die." Or do anachrt
isms constitute poesy ? In that case, indeed. 3
Robertson may assert something like a claim
poetic fancy, for he makes Eliah thus hold for
to Samuel :
Ellin said, " Thou talk'st not with a soy :
I am the eldest of my father's house :
Nor was I reared in chapels among priests
And women, doing always the same things.
But in the camp with princes and with knights,
Familiar with high arguments of biate."
That, surely, is a fair exercise of poetic Heen
nor was it the thought of an ordinary 11111
to place the following verse in the mouth
Nero :

Let Plantins kennel in the camp,
If that his genius suits,
Where varicose centurions tramp
In vulgar hobnailed boots,
Panlinus, if he finds it good,
May slaughter harmless folk,
May make his fingers smell of blood,
May sleep upon his cloak.
How severely classical is this full-length ports
a Roman captain tramping through ports
the In'
with varicose veins, and in heavy high-low
nor may we pass over without applause t
scornfully alliterative sound in the first line.
" kennel in the camp." Our poet's rhym,
moreover, are not less original than his ideas,
the subjoined extract will suffice to show :